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" UNTO THIS LAST" 



"UNTO THIS LAST:" 




LES OF 



POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



JOHN RUSKIN. 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN WILEY & SON, 535 BROADWAY. 

1866. 






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NEW YORK PRINTING COMPANY, 

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"FRIEND, I DO THEE NO WRONG. Dm'ST NOT THOU AGREE WITH ME FOR 
A PENNY? TAKE THAT THINE IS, AND GO THY WAY. I WILL GIVE UNTO 
THIS LAST EVEN AS UNTO THEE." 



"IF YE THINK GOOD, GIVE ME MY PRICE; AND IF NOT, FORBEAR. SO 
THEY WEIGHED FOR MY PRICE THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER." 




"FACE. 



The four following essays were published eighteen months 
ago in the Cornhill Magazine, and were reprobated in a vio- 
lent manner, as far as I could hear, by most of the readers 
they met with. 

Not a whit the less, I believe them to be the best, that is 
to say, the truest, rightest-worded, and most serviceable 
things I have ever written ; and the last of them, having 
had especial pains spent on it, is probably the best I shall 
ever write. 

" This," the reader may reply, " it might be, yet not 
therefore well written." Which, in no mock humility, 
admitting, I yet rest satisfied with the work, though with 
nothing else that I have done ; and purposing shortly to 
follow out the subjects opened in these papers, as I may 
find leisure, I wish the introductory statements to be with- 
in the reach of any one who may care to refer to them. 
So I republish the essays as they appeared. One word 
only is changed, correcting the estimate of a weight ; and 
no word is added. 

Although, however, I find nothing to modify in these 



Vlll PEBFACE. 

papers, it is matter of regret to me that the most startling 
of all the statements in them, — that respecting the necessity 
of the organization of labour, with fixed wages, — should 
have found its way into the first essay ; it being quite one 
of the least important, though by no means the least cer- 
tain, of the positions to be defended. The real gist of these 
papers, their central meaning and aim, is to give, as I 
believe for the first time in plain English, — it has often 
been incidentally given in good Greek by Plato and Xeno- 
phon, and good Latin by Cicero and Horace, — a logical 
definition of wealth: such definition being absolutely 
needed for a basis of economical science. The most reput- 
ed essay on that subject which has appeared in modern 
times, after opening with the statement that " writers on 
political economy profess to teach, or to investigate,* the 
nature of wealth," thus follows up the declaration of its 
thesis — " Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for 
common purposes, of what is meant by wealth." ..." It 
is no part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphy- 
sical nicety of definition.! " 

Metaphysical nicety, we assuredly do not need ; but 
physical nicety, and logical accuracy, with respect to a phy- 
sical subject, we as assuredly do. 

* Which? for where investigation is necessary, teaching is impos- 
sible. 

t Principles of Political Economy. By J. S. Mill. Preliminary 
remarks, p. 2. 



PREFACE. IX 

Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being House 
law (Oikonomia), had been Star-law (Astronomia), and that, 
ignoring distinction between stars fixed and wandering, as 
here between wealth radiant and wealth reflective, the 
writer had begun thus : " Every one has a notion, suffi- 
ciently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by 
stars. Metaphysical nicety in the definition of a star is not 
the object of this treatise ;" — the essay so opened might 
yet have been far more true in its final statements, and a 
thousand-fold more serviceable to the navigator, than any 
treatise on wealth, which founds its conclusions on the 
popular conception of wealth, can ever become to the 
economist. 

It was, therefore, the first object of these following 
papers to give an accurate and stable definition of wealth. 
Their second object was to show that the acquisition of 
wealth was finally possible only under certain moral con- 
ditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in * 
the existence and even, for practical purposes, in the attain- 
ability of honesty. 

Without venturing to pronounce — since on such a matter 
human judgment is by no means conclusive — what is, or 
is not, the noblest of God's works, we may yet admit so 
much of Pope's assertion as that an honest man is among 
His best works presently visible, and, as things stand, a 
somewhat rare one ; but not an incredible or miraculous 

1* 



X PREFACE. 

work ; still less an abnormal one. Honesty is not a dis- 
turbing force, which deranges the orbits of economy ; but 
a consistent and commanding force, by obedience to which 
— and by no other obedience — those orbits can continue 
clear of chaos. 

It is true, I have sometimes heard Pope condemned for 
the lowness, instead of the height, of his standard : — " Hon- 
esty is indeed a respectable virtue ; but how much higher 
may men attain ! Shall nothing more be asked of us than 
that we be honest ? " 

For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems that in 
our aspirations to be more than that, we have to some 
extent lost sight of the propriety of being so much as that. 
What else we may have lost faith in, there shall be here no 
question ; but assuredly we have lost faith in common hon- 
esty, and in the working power of it/ And this faith, with 
the facts on which it may rest, it is quite our first business 
to recover and keep : not only believing, but even by 
experience assuring ourselves, that there are yet in the 
world men who can be restrained from fraud otherwise 
than by the fear of losing employment ;* nay, that it is even 
accurately in proportion to the number of such men in any 
State, that the said State does or can prolong its existence. 

* " The effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is 
not that of his corporation, but of his customers. It is the fear of 
losing their employment which restrains his frauds, and corrects his 
negligence." (Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. 10.) 



PREFACE. XI 

To these two points, then, the following essays are main- 
ly directed. The subject of the organization of labour is 
only casually touched upon ; because, if we once can get a 
sufficient quantity of honesty in our captains, the organiza- 
tion of labour is easy, and will develop itself without quar- 
rel or difficulty ; but if we cannot get honesty in our 
captains, the organization of labour is for evermore impos- 
sible. 

The several conditions of its possibility I purpose to 
examine at length in the sequel. Yet, lest the reader 
should be alarmed by the hints thrown out during the fol- 
lowing investigation of first principles, as if they were lead- 
ing him into unexpectedly dangerous ground, I will, for 
his better assurance, state at once the worst of the political 
creed at which I wish him to arrive. 

1. First, — that there should be training schools for youth 
established, at Government cost,* and under Government 
discipline, over the whole country ; that every child born 
in the country should, at the parent's wish, be permitted 
(and, in certain cases, be under penalty required) to pass 

* It will probably be inquire! by near-sighted persons, out of what 
funds such schools could be supported The expedient modes of direct 
provision for them I will examine hereafter; indirectly, they would be 
far more than self-supporting. The economy in crime alone, (cmite 
one of the most costly articles of luxury in the modern European mar- 
ket,) which such schools would induce, would suffice to support them 
ten times over. Their economy of labour would be pure gain, and 
that too large to be presently calculable. 



Xll PREFACE. 

through them ; and that, in these schools, the child should 
(with other minor pieces of knowledge hereafter to be con- 
sidered) imperatively be taught, with the best skill of teach- 
ing that the country could produce, the following three 
things : — 

(a) the laws of health, and the exercises enjoined by 
them ; 

(h) habits of gentleness and justice; and 

(c) the calling by which he is to live. 

2. Secondly, — that, in connection with these training 
schools, there should be established, also entirely under 
Government regulation, manufactories and workshops, for 
the production and sale of every necessary of life, and for 
the exercise of every useful art. And that, interfering no 
whit with private enterprise, nor setting any restraints or 
tax on private trade, but leaving both to do their best, and 
beat the Government if they could, — there should, at these 
Government manufactories and shops, be authoritatively 
good and exemplary work done, and pure and true sub- 
stance sold ; so that a man could be sure, if he chose to 
pay the Government price, that he got for his money bread 
that was bread, ale that was ale, and work that was 
work. 

3. Thirdly, — that any man, or woman, or boy, or girl, 
out of employment, should be at once received at the near- 
est Government school, and set to such work as it appeared, 
on trial, they were fit for, at a fixed rate of wages deter- 



PREFACE. XII 1 

minable every year: — that, being found incapable of work 
through ignorance, they should be taught, or being found 
incapable of work through sickness, should be tended ; but 
that being found objecting to work, they should be set, 
under compulsion of the strictest nature, to the more pain- 
ful and degrading forms of necessary toil, especially to that 
in mines and other places of danger (such danger being, 
however, diminished to the utmost by careful regulation 
and discipline) and the due wages of such work be retain- 
ed — cost of compulsion first abstracted — to be at the work- 
man's command, so soon as he has come to sounder mind 
respecting the laws of employment. 

4. Lastly, — that for the old and destitute, comfort and 
home should be provided; which provision, when misfor- 
tune had been by the working of such a system sifted from 
guilt, would be honourable instead of disgraceful to the 
receiver. For (I repeat this passage out of my Political 
Economy of Art, to which the reader is referred for farther 
detail *) " a labourer serves his country with his spade, just 
as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with sword, 
pen, or lancet. If the service be less, and, therefore, the 
wages during health less, then the reward when health is 
broken maybe less, but not less honourable; and it ought 
to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a 
labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he 
has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank 

* Addenda, p. 102. 



XIV PREFACE. 

to take his pension from his country, because he has 
deserved well of his country." 

To which statement, I will only add, for conclusion, 
respecting the discipline and pay of life and death, that, for 
both high and low, Livy's last words touching Valerius 
Publicola, " de publico est elatus" * ought not to be a dis- 
honourable close of epitaph. 

These things, then, I believe, and am about, as I find 
power, to explain and illustrate in their various bearings ; 
following out also what belongs to them of collateral inqui- 
ry. Here I state them only in brief, to prevent the reader 
casting about in alarm for my ultimate meaning; yet 
requesting him, for the present, to remember, that in a sci- 
ence dealing with so subtle elements as those of human 
nature, it is only possible to answer for the final truth of 
principles, not for the direct success of plans : and that in 
the best of these last, what can be immediately accomplish- 
ed is always questionable, and what can be finally accom- 
plished, inconceivable. 

* " P. Valerius, omnium consensu princeps belli pacisque artibus, 
anno postmoritur; gloria ingenti, copiis familiaribus adeo exiguis, ut 
funeri sumtus deesset: de publico est elatus. Luxere matrons ut 
Brutum." — Lib. IX c. xvi. 

Denmark Hill, 10th May, 1862. 



CONTENTS. 



ESSAY PAGE 

I. — The Eoots of Honour 17 

II. — The Veins of Wealth 43 

III. — Qui Judicatis Terram 63 

IV. — Ad Valorem 90 



"UNTO THIS LAST." 



ESSAY I. 

THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

A&ong the delusions which at different periods have pos- 
sessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human 
race, perhaps the most curious — certainly the least creditable 
— is the modern soi-disant science of political economy, 
based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action 
may be determined irrespectively of the influence of social 
affection. 

Of course, as in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witch- 
craft, and other such popular creeds, political economy has a 
plausible idea at the root of it. " The social affections," says 
the economist, " are accidental and disturbing elements in 
human nature; but avarice and the desire of progress are 
constant elements. Let us elhninate the inconstants, and, 
considering the human being merely as a covetous machine, 
examine by what laws of labour, purchase, and sale, the 
greatest accumulative result in wealth is attainable. Those 



18 THE BOOTS OF HONOUR. 

laws once determined, it will be for each individual after- 
wards to introduce as much of the disturbing affectionate 
element as he chooses, and to determine for himself the 
result on the new conditions supposed." 

This would be a perfectly logical and successful method 
of analysis, if the accidentals afterwards to be introduced 
were of the same nature as the powers first examined. 
Supposing a body in motion to be influenced by constant 
and inconstant forces, it is usually the simplest way of 
examining its course to trace it first under the persistent 
conditions, and afterwards introduce the causes of variation. 
But the disturbing elements in the social problem are not 
of the same nature as the constant ones; they alter the 
essence of the creature under examination the moment 
they are added; they operate, not mathematically, but 
chemically, introducing conditions which render all our 
previous knowledge unavailable. We made learned experi- 
ments upon pure nitrogen, and have convinced ourselves 
that it is a very manageable gas: but behold! the thing 
which we have practically to deal with is its chloride ; and 
this, the moment we touch it on our established principles, 
sends us and our apparatus through the ceiling. 

Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclusions of 
the science, if its terms are accepted. I am simply unin- 
terested in them, as I should be in those of a science of 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 19 

gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons. It 
might be shown, on that supposition, that it would he 
advantageous to roll the students up into pellets, flatten 
them into cakes, or stretch them into cables; and that 
when these results were effected, the re-insertion of the 
skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to 
their constitution. The reasoning might be admirable, the 
conclusions true, and the science deficient only in applica- 
bility. Modern political economy stands on a precisely 
similar basis. Assuming, not that the human being has 
no skeleton, but that it is all skeleton, it founds an ossi- 
fiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul ; and 
having shown the utmost that may be made of bones, and 
constructed a number of interesting geometrical figures 
with death's-heads and humeri, successfully proves the 
inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul among these 
corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this 
theory: I simply deny its applicability to the present phase 
of the world. 

This inapplicability has been curiously manifested during 
the embarrassment caused by the late strikes of our work- 
men. Here occurs one of the simplest cases, in a per- 
tinent and positive form, of the first vital problem which 
political economy has to deal with (the relation between 
employer and employed) ; and at a severe crisis, when 



20 THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

lives in multitudes, and wealth in masses, are at stake, the 
political economists are helpless — practically mute ; no demon- 
strable solution of the difficulty can be given by them, 
such as may convince or calm the opposing parties. Obsti- 
nately the masters take one view of the matter ; obstinately 
the operatives another; and no political science can set 
them at one. 

It would be strange if it could, it being not by "science" 
of any kind that men were ever intended to be set at one. 
Disputant after disputant vainly strives to show that the 
interests of the masters are, or are not, antagonistic to those 
of the men : none of the pleaders ever seeming to remember 
that it does not absolutely or always follow that the persons 
must be antagonistic because their interests are. If there 
is only a crust of bread in the house, and mother and chil- 
dren are starving, their interests are not the same. If the 
mother eats it, the children want it ; if the children eat it, 
the mother must go hungry to her work. Yet it does not 
necessarily follow that there will be " antagonism " between 
them, that they will fight for the crust, and that the mother, 
being strongest, will get it, and eat it. Neither, in any other 
case, whatever the relations of the persons may be, can it 
be assumed for certain that, because their interests are 
diverse, they must necessarily regard each other with hos- 
tility, and use violence or cunniug to obtain the advantage. 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 21 

Even if this were so, and it were as just as it is convenient 
to consider men as actuated by no other moral influences 
than those which affect rats or swine, the logical conditions 
of the question are still indeterminable. It can never be 
shown generally either that the interests of master and la- 
bourer are alike, or that they are opposed ; for, according to 
circumstances, they may be either. It is, indeed, always the 
interest of both that the work should be rightly done, and 
a just price obtained for it ; but, in the division of profits, 
the gain of the one may or may not be the loss of the other. 
It is not the master's interest to pay wages so low as to leave 
the men sickly and depressed, nor the workman's interest 
to be paid high wages if the smallness of the master's profit 
hinders him from enlarging his business, or conducting it in 
a safe and liberal way. A stoker ought not to desire high 
pay if the company is too poor to keep the engine-wheels in 
repair. 

And the varieties of circumstances which influence these 
reciprocal interests are so endless, that all endeavour to 
deduce rules of action from balance of expediency is in vain. 
And it is meant to be in vain. v For no human actions ever 
were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances 
of expediency, but by balances of justice. ' He has therefore 
rendered all endeavours to determine expediency futile for 
evermore. No man ever knew, or can know, what will be 



22 THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any given line 
of conduct. But every man may know, and most of us do 
know, what is a just and unjust act. And all of us may know 
also, that the consequences of justice will be ultimately the 
best possible, both to others and ourselves, though we can 
neither say what is best, nor how it is likely to come to pass. 

I have said balauces of justice, meaning, in the term jus- 
tice, to include affection, — such affection as one man owes 
to another. All right relations between master and opera- 
tive, and all their best interests, ultimately depend on these. 

We shall find the best and simplest illustration of the 
relations of master and operative in the position of domestic 
servants. 

We will suppose that the master of a household desires 
only to get as much work out of his servants as he can, at 
the rate of wages he gives. He never allows them to be 
idle ; feeds them as poorly and lodges them as ill as they 
will endure, and in all things pushes his requirements to the 
exact point beyond which he cannot go without forcing the 
servant to leave him. In doing this, there is no violation on 
his part of what is commonly called "justice." He agrees 
with the domestic for his whole time and service, and takes 
them ; the limits of hardship in treatment being fixed by the 
practice of other masters in his neighbourhood ; that is to 
say, by the current rate of wages for domestic labour. If the 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 23 

servant can get a better place, lie is free to take one, and 
the master can only tell what is the real market value of his 
labour, by requiring as much as he will give. 

This is the politico-economical view of the case, according 
to the doctors of that science ; who assert that by this proce- 
dure the greatest average of work will be obtained from the 
servant, and therefore, the greatest benefit to the commu- 
nity, and through the commuuity, by reversion, to the servant 
himself. 

That, however, is not so. It would be so if the servant 
were an engine of which the motive power was steam, mag- 
netism, gravitation, or any other agent of calculable force. 
But he being, on the contrary, an engine whose motive 
power is a Soul, the force of this very peculiar agent, as an 
unknown quantity, enters into all the political economist's 
equations, without his knowledge, and falsifies every one of 
their results. The largest quantity of work will not be done 
by this curious engine for pay, or under pressure, or by help 
of any kind of fuel which may be applied by the chaldron. 
It will be done only when the motive force, that is to say, 
",the will or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest 
jstrength by its own proper fuel ; namely, by the affections. * 

It may indeed happen, and does happen often, that if the 
master is a man of sense and energy, a large quantity of 
material work may be done under mechanical pressure, 



24 THE ROOTS OP HONOUR. 

enforced by strong will and guided by wise method; also 
it may happen, and does happen often, that if the master is 
indolent and weak (however good-natured), a very small 
quantity of work, and that bad, may be produced by the 
servant's undirected strength, and contemptuous gratitude. 
But the universal law of the matter is that, assuming any 
given quantity of energy and sense in master and servant, 
the greatest material result obtainable by them will be, not 
through antagonism to each other, but through affection for 
each other ; and that if the master, instead of endeavouring 
to get as much work as possible from the servant, seeks 
rather to render his appointed and necessary work beneficial 
to him, and to forward his interests in all just and wholesome 
ways, the real amount of work ultimately done, or of good 
rendered, by the person so cared for, will indeed be the 
greatest possible. 

Observe, I say, " of good rendered," for a servant's work 
is not necessarily or always the best thing he can give his 
master. But good of all kinds, whether in material service, 
in protective watchfulness of his master's interest and credit, 
or in joyful readiness to seize unexpected and irregular occa- 
sions of help. 

Nor is this one whit less generally true because indulgence 
will be frequently abused, and kindness met with ingratitude. 
For the servant who, gently treated, is ungrateful, treated 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 25 

ungently, will be revengeful ; and the man who is dishonest 
to a liberal master will be injurious to an unjust one. 

In any case, and with any person, this unselfish treatment 
w r ill produce the most effective return. Observe, I am here 
considering the affections wholly as a motive power ; not at 
all as things in themselves desirable or noble, or in any other 
way abstractedly good. I look at them simply as an anoma- 
lous force, rendering every one of the ordinary political eco- 
nomist's calculations nugatory ; while, even if he desired to 
introduce this new element into his estimates, he has no 
power of dealing with it ; for the affections only become a 
true motive power when they ignore every other motive and 
condition of political economy. Treat the servant kindly, 
with the idea of turning his gratitude to account, and you 
will get, as you deserve, no gratitude, nor any value for your 
kindness ; but treat him kindly without any economical pur- 
pose, and all economical purposes will be answered ; in this, 
as in all other matters, whosoever will save his life shall lose 
it, and whoso loses it shall find it.* 

* The difference between the two modes of treatment, and between their 
effective material results, may be seen very accurately by a comparison of 
the relations of Esther and Charlie in Bleak House, with those of Miss 
Brass and the Marchioness in Master Humphrey's Clock. 

The essential value and truth of Dickens's writings have been unwisely 

lost sight of by many thoughtful persons, merely because he presents his 

2 



26 THE ROOTS OF HONOTTK. 

The next clearest and simplest example of relation between 
master and operative is that which exists between the com- 
mander of a regiment and his men. 

Supposing the officer only desires to apply the rules of dis- 
cipline so as, with least trouble to himself, to make the regi- 
ment most effective, he will not be able, by any rules, or 
administration of rules, on this selfish principle, to develop 

truth with some colour of caricature. Unwisely, because Dickens's carica- 
ture, though often gross, is never mistaken. Allowing for his manner of 
telling them, the things he tells us are always true. I wish that he could 
think it right to limit his brilliant exaggeration to works written only for 
public amusement ; and when he takes up a subject of high national import- 
ance, such as that which he handled in Hard Times, that he would use 
severer and more accurate analysis. The usefulness of that work (to my 
mind, in several respects, the greatest he has written) is with many persons 
seriously diminished because Mr. Bounderby is a dramatic monster, instead 
of a characteristic example of a worldly master ; and Stephen Blackpool a 
dramatic perfection, instead of a characteristic example of an honest work- 
man. But let us not lose the use of Dickens's wit and insight, because he 
chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main 
drift and purpose in every book he has written ; and all of them, but espe- 
cially Hard Times, should be studied with close and earnest care by persons 
interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial, and, be- 
cause partial, apparently unjust ; but if they examine all the evidence on the 
other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it will appear, after all their 
trouble, that his view was the finally right one, grossly and sharply told. 



THE BOOTS OF HONOUR. 21 

the full strength of his subordinates. If a man of sense and 
firmness, he may, as in the former instance, produce a better 
result than would be obtained by the irregular kindness of a 
weak officer ; but let the sense and firmness be the same in 
both cases, and assuredly the officer who has the most direct 
personal relations with his men, the most care for their 
interests, and the most value for their lives, will develop 
their effective strength, through their affection for his own 
person, and trust in his character, to a degree wholly unat- 
tainable by other means. The law applies still more strin- 
gently as the numbers concerned are larger ; a charge may 
often be successful, though the men dislike their officers ; a 
battle has rarely been won, unless they loved their general. 

Passing from these simple examples to the more complicated 
relations existing between a manufacturer and his workmen, 
we are met first by certain curious difficulties, resulting, 
apparently, from a harder and colder state of moral elements. 
It is easy to imagine an enthusiastic affection existing among 
soldiers for the colonel. Not so easy to imagine an enthusiastic 
affection among cotton-spinners for the proprietor of the mill. 
A body of men associated for purposes of robbery (as a High- 
land clan in ancient times) shall be animated by perfect affec- 
tion, and every member of it be ready to lay down his life for 
the life of his chief. But a band of men associated for purposes 
of legal production and accumulation is usually animated, it 



28 THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

appears, by no such emotions, and none of them are in any- 
wise willing to give his life for the life of his chief. Not only 
are we met by this apparent anomaly, in moral matters, but 
by others connected with it, in administration of system. For 
a servant or a soldier is engaged at a definite rate of wages, 
for a definite period ; but a workman at a rate of wages vari- 
able according to the demand for labour, and with the risk 
of being at any time thrown out of his situation by chances 
of trade. Now, as, under these contingencies, no action of 
the affections can take place, but only an explosive action of 
disaffection s, two points offer themselves for consideration in 
the matter. 

The first — How far the rate of wages may be so regu- 
lated as not to vary with the demand for labour. 

The second — How far it is possible that bodies of work- 
men may be engaged and maintained at such fixed rate 
of wages (whatever the state of trade may be), without 
enlarging or diminishing their number, so as to give them 
permanent interest in the establishment with which they 
are connected, like that of the domestic servants in an old 
family, or an esprit de corps, like that of the soldiers in a 
crack regiment. 

The first question is, I say, how far it may be possible 
to fix the rate of wages irrespectively of the demand for 
labour. 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 29 

Perhaps one of the most curious facts in the history of 
human error is the denial by the common political econo- 
mist of the possibility of thus regulating wages ; while for 
all the important, and much of the unimportant, labour on 
the earth, wages are already so regulated. 

We do not sell our prime-ministership by Dutch auction ; 
nor, on the decease of a bishop, whatever may be the 
general advantages of simony, do we (yet) offer his diocese 
to the clergyman who will take the episcopacy at the low- 
est contract. We (with exquisite sagacity of political eco- 
nomy !) do indeed sell commissions, but not openly, general- 
ships: sick, we do not inquire for a physician who takes 
less than a guinea ; litigious, we never think of reducing 
six-and-eightpence to four-and-sixpence ; caught in a shower, 
we do not canvass the cabmen, to find one who values his 
driving at less than sixpence a mile. 

It is true that in all these cases there is, and in every 
conceivable case there must be, ultimate reference to the 
presumed difficulty of the work, or number of candidates 
for the office. If it were thought that the labour necessary 
to make a good physician would be gone through by a 
sufficient number of students with the prospect of only half- 
guinea fees, public consent would soon withdraw the unne- 
cessary half-guinea. In this ultimate sense, the price of 
labour is indeed always regulated by the demand for it; 



30 THE ROOTS OP HONOUR. 

but so far as the practical and immediate administration 
of the matter is regarded, the best labour always has been, 
and is, as all labour ought to be, paid by an invariable 
standard. 

" What !" the reader, perhaps, answers amazedly : " pay 
good and bad workmen alike ?" 

Certainly. The difference between one prelate's sermons 
and his successor's, — or between one physician's opinion 
and another's — is far greater, as respects the qualities of 
mind involved, and far move important in result to you 
personally, than the difference between good and bad lay- 
ing of bricks (though that is greater than most people 
suppose). Yet you pay with equal fee, contentedly, the good 
and bad workmen upon your soul, and the good and bad 
workmen upon your body; much more may you pay, con- 
tentedly, with equal fees, the good and bad workmen upon 
your house. 

" Nay, but I choose my physician and (?) my clergy- 
man, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work." 
By all means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the 
proper reward of the good workman, to be "chosen." 
The natural and right system respecting all labour is, that 
it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman 
employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false, 
unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad work- 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 31 

man is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either 
take the place of the good, or force him by his competition 
to work for an inadequate sum. 

This equality of wages, then, being the first object towards 
which Ave have to discover the directest available road ; the 
second is, as above stated, that of maintaining constant 
numbers of workmen in employment, whatever may be the 
accidental demand for the article they produce. 

I believe the sudden and extensive inequalities of demand 
which necessarily arise in the mercantile operations of an 
active nation, constitute the only essential difficulty which 
has to be overcome in a just organization of labour. The 
subject opens into too many branches to admit of being 
investigated in a paper of this kind ; but the following gene- 
ral facts bearing on it may be noted. 

The wages which enable any workman to live are neces- 
sarily higher, if his work is liable to intermission, than if it 
is assured and continuous ; and however severe the struggle 
for work may become, the general law will always hold, that 
men must get more daily pay if, on the average, they can 
only calculate on work three days a week, than they would 
require if they were sure of work six days a week. Sup- 
posing that a man cannot live on less than a shilling a day, 
his seven shillings he must get, either for three days' violent 
work, or six days' deliberate work. The tendency of all 









32 THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

modern mercantile operations is to throw both wages and 
trade into the form of a lottery, and to make the workman's 
pay depend on intermittent exertion, and the principal's pro- 
fit on dexterously used chance. 

In what partial degree, I repeat, this may be necessary, 
in consequence of the activities of modern trade, I do not 
here investigate ; contenting myself with the fact, that in 
its fatallest aspects it is assuredly unnecessary, and results 
merely from love of gambling on the part of the masters, 
and from ignorance and sensuality in the men. The masters 
cannot bear to let any opportunity of gain escape them, and 
frantically rush at every gap and breach in the walls of 
Fortune, raging to be rich, and affronting, with impatient 
covetousness, every risk of ruin ; while the men prefer three 
days of violent labour, and three days of drunkenness, to six 
days of moderate work and wise rest. There is no way in 
which a principal, who really desires to help his workmen, 
may do it more effectually than by checking these disorderly 
habits both in himself and them ; keeping his own business 
operations on a scale which will enable him to pursue them 
securely, not yielding to temptations of precarious gain; and, 
at the same time, leading his workmen into regular habits 
of labour and life, either by inducing them rather to take 
low "wages in the form of a fixed salary, than high wages, 
subject to the chance of their being thrown out of work; or, 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 33 

if this be impossible, by discouraging the system of violent 
exertion for nominally high day wages, and leading the men 
to take lower pay for more regular labour. 

In effecting any radical changes of this kind, doubtless 
there would be great inconvenience and loss incurred by all 
the originators of movement. That which can be done with 
perfect convenience and without loss, is not always the 
thing that most needs to be done, or which we are most 
imperatively required to do. 

I have already alluded to the difference hitherto existing 
between regiments of men associated for purposes of vio- 
lence, and for purposes of manufacture ; in that the former 
appear capable of self-sacrifie.e — the latter, not ; which singu- 
lar fact is the real reason of the general lowness of estimate 
in which the profession of commerce is held, as compared 
with that of arms. Philosophically, it does not, at first sight, 
appear reasonable (many writers have endeavoured to prove 
it unreasonable) that a peaceable and rational person, whose 
trade is buying and selling, should be held in less honour 
than an unpeaceable and often irrational person, whose trade 
is slaying. Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, 
in spite of the philosophers, given precedence to the soldier. 

And this is right. 

For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not slay- 
ing, but being slain. This, without well knowing its own 

2* 



34 THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

meaning, the world honours it for. A bravo's trade is slay- 
ing; but the world has never respected bravos more than 
merchants : the reason it honours the soldier is, because he 
holds his life at the service of the State. Reckless he may be 
— fond of pleasure or of adventure — all kinds of bye-motives 
and mean impulses may have determined the choice of his 
profession, and may affect (to all appearance exclusively) his 
daily conduct in it ; but our estimate of him is based on this 
ultimate fact — of which Ave are well assured — that, put him 
in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the world 
behind him, and only death and his duty in front of him, he 
will keep his face to the front ; and he knows that this choice 
may be put to him at any moment, and has beforehand taken 
his part — virtually takes such part continually — does, in 
reality, die daily. 

Not less is the respect we pay to the lawyer and physician, 
founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. Whatever the learn- 
ing or acuteness of a great lawyer, our chief respect for him 
depends on our belief that, set in a judge's seat, he will strive 
to judge justly, come of it what may. Could we suppose that 
he would take bribes, and use his acuteness and legal know- 
ledge to give plausibility to iniquitous decisions, no degree 
of intellect would win for him our respect. Nothing will win 
it, short of our tacit conviction, that in all important acts of 
his life justice is first with him; his own interest, second. 



THE BOOTS OF HONOUR. 35 

In the case of a physician, the ground of the honour we 
render him is clearer still. Whatever his science, we should 
shrink from him in horror if we found him regard his patients 
merely as subjects to experiment upon ; much more, if we 
found that, receiving bribes from persons interested in their 
deaths, he was using his best skill to give poison in the mask 
of mediciue. 

Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness as it 
respects clergymen. No goodness of disposition will excuse 
want of science in a physician or of shrewdness in an advo- 
cate; but a clergyman, even though his power of intellect be 
small, is respected on the presumed ground of his unselfish- 
ness and serviceableness. 

Now there can be no question but that the tact, foresight, 
decision, and other mental powers, required for the success- 
ful management of a large mercantile concern, if not such as 
could be compared with those of a great lawyer, general, or 
divine, would at least match the general conditions of mind 
required in the subordinate officers of a ship, or of a regiment, 
or in the curate of a country parish. If, therefore, all the 
efficient members of the so-called liberal professions are still, 
somehow, in public estimate of honour, preferred before the 
head of a commercial firm, the reason must lie deeper than in 
the measurement of their several powers of mind. 

And the essential reason for such preference will be found 



36 THE ROOTS OP HONOUR. 

to lie in the fact that the merchant is presumed to act always 
selfishly. His work may be very necessary to the commu- 
nity ; but the motive of it is understood to be wholly per- 
sonal. The merchant's first object in ail his dealings must be 
(the public believe) to get as much for himself, and leave as 
little to his neighbour (or customer) as possible. Enforcing 
this upon him, by political statute, as the necessary principle 
of his action ^ recommending it to him on all occasions, and 
themselves reciprocally adopting it ; proclaiming vociferously, 
for law of the universe, that a buyer's function is to cheapen, 
and a seller's to cheat, — the public, nevertheless, involuntarily 
condemn the man of commerce for his compliance with their 
own statement, and stamp him for ever as belonging to an 
inferior grade of human personality. 

This they will find, eventually, they must give up doing. 
They must not cease to condemn selfishness ; but they will 
have to discover a kind of commerce which is not exclusively 
selfish. Or, rather, they will have to discover that there 
never was, or can be, any other kind of commerce ; that this 
which they have called commerce was not commerce at all, 
but co/.ening ; and that a true merchant differs as much from 
a merchant according to laws of modern political economy, 
as the hero of the Excursion from Autolycus. They will 
find that commerce is an occupation which gentlemen will 
every day see more need to engage in, rather than in the 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 37 

businesses of talking to men, or slaying them ; that, in true 
commerce, as in true preaching, or true fighting, it is neces- 
sary to admit the idea of occasional voluntary loss ; — that 
sixpences have to be lost, as well as lives, under a sense of 
duty ; that the market may have its martyrdoms as well as 
the pulpit ; and trade its heroisms, as well as Avar. 

May have — in the final issue, must have — and only has not 
had yet, because men of heroic temper have always been mis- 
guided in their youth into other fields, not recognizing what 
is in our days, perhaps, the most important of all fields ; so 
that, while many a zealous person loses his life in trying to 
teach the form of a gospel, very few will lose a hundred 
pounds in showing the practice of one. 

The fact is, that people never have had clearly explained 
to them the true functions of a merchant with respect to 
other people. I should like the reader to be very clear about 
this. 

Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily neces- 
sities of life, have hitherto existed — three exist necessarily, 
in every civilized nation : 

The Soldier's profession is to defend it. 

The Pastor's, to teach it. 

The Physician's, to keep it in health. 

The Lawyer's, to enforce justice in it. 

The Merchant's, %o provide for it. 



38 THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to die 
for it. 

" On due occasion," namely :— 

The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle. 

The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague. 

The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood. 

The Lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice. 

The Merchant — What is his " due occasion " of death ? 

It is the main question for the merchant, as for all of us. 
For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not 
know how to live. 

Observe, the merchant's function (or manufacturer's, for in 
the broad sense in which it is here used the word must be 
understood to include both) is to provide for the nation. It 
is no more his function to get profit for himself out of that 
provision than it is a clergyman's function to get his sti- 
pend. The stipend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not 
the object, of his life, if he be a true clergyman, any more 
than his fee (or honorarium) is the object of life to a true 
physician. Neither is his fee the object of life to a true mer- 
chant. All three, if true men, have a work to be done 
irrespective of fee — to be done even at any cost, or for quite 
the contrary of fee ; the pastor's function being to teach, the 
physician's to heal, and the merchant's, as I have said, to 
provide. That is to say, he has to understand to their very 



THE ROOTS OF HONOUK. 39 

root the qualities of the thing he deals in, and the means of 
obtaining or producing it ; and he has to apply all his saga- 
city and energy to the producing or obtaining it in perfect 
state, and distributing it at the cheapest possible price where 
it is most needed. 

And because the production or obtaining of any commo- 
dity involves necessarily the agency of many lives and hands, 
the merchant becomes in the course of his business the mas- 
ter and governor of large masses of men in a more direct, 
though less confessed way, than a military officer or pastor ; 
so that on him falls, in great part, the responsibility for the 
kind of life they lead : and it becomes his duty, not only to 
be always considering how to produce what he sells in the 
purest and cheapest forms, but how to make the various 
employments involved in the production, or transference of 
it, most beneficial to the men employed. 

And as into these two functions, requiring for their right 
exercise the highest intelligence, as well as patience, kind- 
ness, and tact, the merchant is bound to put all his energy, so 
for their just discharge he is bound, as soldier or physician is 
bound, to give up, if need be, his fife, in such way as may be 
demanded of him. Two main points he has iu his providing 
function to maintain : first, his engagements (faithfulness to 
engagements being the real root of all possibilities in com- 
merce) ; and, secondly, the perfectness and purity of the 



40 THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

thing provided ; so that, rather than fail in any engagement, 
or consent to any deterioration, adulteration, or unjust and 
exorbitant price of that which he provides, he is bound to 
meet fearlessly any form of distress, poverty, or labour, which 
may, through maintenance of these points, come upon him. 

Again : in his office as governor of the men employed by 
him, the merchant or manufacturer is invested with a dis- 
tinctly paternal authority and responsibility. In most cases, 
a youth entering a commercial establishment is withdrawn 
altogether from home influence; his master must become 
his father, else he has, for practical and constant help, no 
father at hand : in all cases the master's authority, together 
with the general tone and atmosphere of his business, and 
the character of the men with whom the youth is compelled 
in the course of it to associate, have more immediate and 
pressing weight than the* home influence, and will usually 
neutralize it either for good or evil ; so that the only means 
which the master has of doing justice to the men employed 
by him is to ask himself sternly whether he is dealing with 
such subordinate as he would with his own son, if com- 
pelled by circumstances to take such a position. 

Supposing the captain of a frigate saw it right, or were 
by any chance obliged, to place his own son in the position of 
a common sailor; as he would then treat his son, he is 
bound always to treat every one of the men under him. 



THE KOOTS OF HONOUR. 41 

So, also, supposing the master of a manufactory saw it 
right, or were by any chance obliged, to place his own son 
in the position of an ordinary workman ; as he would then 
treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one of his 
men. This is the only effective, true, or practical Rule 
which can be given on this point of political economy. 

And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last 
man to leave his ship in case of wreck, and to share his 
last crust with the sailors in case of famine, so the manu- 
facturer, in any commercial crisis or distress, is bound to 
take the suffering of it with his men, and even to take 
more of it for himself than he allows his men to feel ; as 
a father would in a famine, shipwreck, or battle, sacrifice 
himself for his son. 

All which sounds very strange ; the only real strangeness 
in the matter being, nevertheless, that it should so sound. 
For all this is true, and that not partially nor theoretically, 
but everlastingly and practically: all other doctrine than 
this respecting matters political being false in premises, 
absurd in deduction, and impossible in practice, consistently 
with any progressive state of national life; all the life 
which we now possess as a nation showing itself in the 
resolute denial and scorn, by a few strong minds and faith- 
ful hearts, of the economic principles taught to our mul- 
titudes, which principles, so far as accepted, lead straight 



42 THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 

to national destruction. Respecting the modes and forms 
of destruction to which they lead, and, on the other hand, 
respecting the farther practical working of true polity, I 
hope to reason further in a following paper. 



ESSAY II. 

TEE VEINS OF WEALTE 
The answer which would be made by any ordinary j>olitical 
economist to the statements contained in the preceding 
paper, is in few words as follows : — 

" It is indeed true that certain advantages of a general 
nature may be obtained by the development of social affec- 
tions. But political economists never professed, nor profess, 
to take advantages of a general nature into consideration. 
Our science is simply the science of getting rich. So far 
from being a fallacious or visionary one, it is found by 
experience to be practically effective. Persons who follow 
its precepts do actually become rich, and persons who dis- 
obey them become poor. Every capitalist of Europe has 
acquired his fortune by following the known laws of our sci- 
ence, and increases his capital daily by an adherence to them. 
It is vain to bring forward tricks of logic, against the force 
of accomplished facts. Every man of business knows by 
experience how money is made, and how it is lost." 

Pardon me. Men of business do indeed kuow how they 
themselves made their money, or how, on occasion, they lost 



44 THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 

it. Playing a long-practised game, they are familiar with 
the chances of its cards, and can rightly explain their losses 
and gains. But they neither know who keeps the bank of 
the gambling-house, nor what other games may be played 
with the same cards, nor what other losses and gains, far 
away among the dark streets, are essentially, though invi- 
sibly, dependent on theirs in the lighted rooms. They have 
learned a few, and only a few, of the laws of mercantile 
economy ; but not one of those of political economy. 

Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe 
that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word 
" rich." At least if they know, they do not in their reason- 
ings allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying 
its opposite "poor" as positively as the word "north" 
implies its opposite " south." Men nearly always speak and 
write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by 
following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. 
Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting 
only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of 
the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the 
default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. If he did 
not want it, it would be of no use to you ; the degree of 
power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or 
desire he has for it, — and the art of making yourself rich, 
in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 45 

equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour 
poor. 

I would not contend in this matter (and rarely in any mat- 
ter), for the acceptance of terms. But I wish the reader 
clearly and deeply to understand the difference between the 
two economies, to which the terms "Political" and "Mer- 
cantile " might not unadvisably be attached. 

Political economy (the economy of a State, or of citizens) 
consists simply in the production, preservation, and distribu- 
tion, at fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable things. 
The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time ; the ship- 
wright who drives his bolts well home in sound wood ; the 
builder who lays good bricks in well-tempered mortar ; the 
housewife who takes care of her furniture in the parlour, and 
guards against all waste in her kitchen ; and the singer who 
rightly disciplines, and never overstrains her voice : are all 
political economists in the true and final sense ; adding con- 
tinually to the riches and well-being of the nation to which 
they belong. 

But mercantile economy, the economy of "merces" or of 
"pay," signifies the accumulation, in the hands of individuals, 
of legal or moral claim upon, or power over, the labour of 
others ; every such claim implying precisely as much poverty 
or debt on one side, as it implies riches or right on the other. 

It does not, therefore, necessarily involve an addition to 



46 THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 

the actual property, or -well-being, of the State in which it 
exists. But since this commercial wealth, or power over 
labour, is nearly always convertible at once into real pro- 
perty, while real property is not always convertible at once 
into power over labour, the idea of riches among active men 
in civilized nations, generally refers to commercial wealth; 
and in estimating their possessions, they rather calculate the 
value of their horses and fields by the number of guineas 
they could get for them, than the value of their guineas by 
the number of horses and fields they could buy with them. 

There is, however, another reason for this habit of mind ; 
namely, that an accumulation of real property is of little 
use to its owner, unless, together with it, he has commercial 
power over labour. Thus, suppose any person to be put in 
possession of a large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds 
of gold in its gravel, countless herds of cattle in its pastures; 
houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of useful stores ; 
but suppose, after all, that he could get no servants? In 
order that he may be able to have servants, some one in 
his neighbourhood must be poor, and in want of his gold — or 
his corn. Assume that no one is in want of either, and that 
no servants are to be had. He must, therefore, bake his own 
bread, make his own clothes, plough his own ground, and 
shepherd his own flocks. His gold will be as useful to him 
as any other yellow pebbles on his estate. His stores must 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 47 

rot, fox* he cannot consume them. He can eat no more than 
another man could eat, and wear no more than another man 
could wear. He must lead a life of severe and common 
labour to procure even ordinary comforts ; he will be ulti- 
mately unable to keep either houses in repair, or fields in 
cultivation ; and forced to content himself with a poor man's 
portion of cottage and garden, in the midst of a desert of 
waste land, trampled by wild cattle, and encumbered by ruins 
of palaces, which he will hardly mock at himself by calling 
" his own." 

The most covetous of mankind would, with small exulta- 
tion, I presume, accept riches of this kind on these terms. 
What is really desired, under the name of riches, is, essen- 
tially, power over men ; in its simplest sense, the power 
of obtaining for our own advantage the labour of servant, 
tradesman, and artist ; in wider sense, authority of directing 
large masses of the nation to various ends (good, trivial, or 
hurtful, according to the mind of the rich person). And this 
power of wealth of course is greater or less in direct propor- 
tion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, 
and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who are 
as rich as ourselves, and who are ready to give the same 
price for an article of which the supply is limited. If the 
musician is poor, he will sing for small pay, as long as there 
is only one person who can pay him ; but if there be two 



48 THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 

or three, he will sing for the one who offers hirn most. And 
thus the power of the riches of the patron (always imperfect 
and doubtful, as we shall see presently, even when most 
authoritative) depends first on the poverty of the artist, and 
then on the limitation of the number of equally wealthy 
persons, who also want seats at the concert. So that, as 
above stated, the art of becoming "rich," in the common 
sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating 
much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our 
neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms, it is "the 
art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own 
favour." 

Now the establishment of such inequality cannot be shown 
in the abstract to be either advantageous or disadvantageous 
to the body of the nation. The rash and absurd assumption 
that such inequalities are necessarily advantageous, lies at the 
root of most of the popular fallacies on the subject of political 
economy. For the eternal and inevitable law in this matter is, 
that the beneficialness of the inequality depends, first, on the 
methods by which it was accomplished, and, secondly, on the 
purposes to Avhich it is applied. Inequalities of wealth, unjustly 
established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they 
exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, injure 
it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth 
justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 49 

establishment ; and nobly used, aid it yet more by their 
existence. That is to say, among every active and -well- 
governed people, the various strength of individuals, tested 
by full exertion and specially applied to various need, issues 
in unequal, but harmonious results, receiving reward or 
authority according to its* class and service;* while in the 

* I have been naturally asked several times, with respect to the sentence 
in the first of these papers, "the bad workmen unemployed," "But what 
are you to do with your bad unemployed workmen?" Well, it seems to me 
the question might have occurred to you before. Tour housemaid's place 
is vacant — you give twenty pounds a year — two girls come for it, one neatly 
dressed, the other dirtily ; one with good recommendations, the other with 
none. You do not, under these circumstances, usually ask the dirty one 
if she will come for fifteen pounds, or twelve ; and, on her consenting, take 
her instead of the well-recommended one. Still less do you try to beat 
both down by making them bid against each other, till you can hire both, 
one at twelve pounds a year, and the other at eight. Tou simply take the 
one fittest for the place, and send away the other, not perhaps concerning 
yourself quite as much as you should with the question which you now 
impatiently put to me, " What is to become of her ?" For all that I advise 
you to do, is to deal with workmen as with servants ; and verily the ques- 
tion is of weight: "Your bad workman, idler, and rogue — what are you 
to do with him ?" 

We will consider of this presently : remember that the administration of a 

complete system of national commerce and industry cannot be explained in 

full detail within the space of twelve pages. Meantime, consider whether, 

3 



50 THE VEINS OF "WEALTH. 

inactive or ill-governed nation, the gradations of decay and 
the victories of treason work out also their own rugged sys- 
tem of subjection and success; and substitute, for the melo- 
dious inequalities of concurrent power, the iniquitous domi- 
nances and depressions of guilt and misfortune. 

Thus the circulation of wealth in a nation resembles that 
of the blood in the natural body. There is one quickness of 
the current which comes of cheerful emotion or wholesome 
exercise ; and another which comes of shame or of fever. 
There is a flush of the body which is full of warmth and life ; 
and another which will pass into putrefaction. 

The analogy will hold, down even to minute particulars. 
For as diseased local determination of the blood involves 
depression of the general health of the system, all morbid 
local action of riches will be found ultimately to involve a 
weakening of the resources of the body politic. 

there being confessedly some difficulty in dealing with rogues and idlers, it 
may not be advisable to produce as few of them as possible. If you 
examine into the history of rogues, you will find they are as truly manufac- 
tured articles as anything else, and it is just because our present system 
of political economy gives so largo a stimulus to that manufacture that you 
may know it to be a false one. "We had better seek for a system which 
will develop honest men, than for one which will deal cunningly with vaga- 
bonds. Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed 
iu our prisons. 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 51 

The mode in which this is produced may be at once under- 
stood by examining one or two instances of the development 
of wealth in the simplest possible circumstances. 

Suppose two sailors cast away on an uninhabited coast, 
and obliged to maintain themselves there by their own labour 
for a series of years. 

If they both kept their health, and worked steadily, and 
in amity with each other, they might build themselves a con- 
venient house, and in time come to possess a certain quantity 
of cultivated land, together with various stores laid up for 
future use. All these things would be real riches or pro- 
perty ; and supposing the men both to have worked equally 
hard, they would each have right to equal share or use of it. 
Their political economy would consist merely in careful pre- 
servation and just division of these possessions. Perhaps, 
however, after some time one or other might be dissatisfied 
with the results of their common farming ; and they might 
in consequence agree to divide the land they had brought 
under the spade into equal shares, so that each might thence- 
forward work in his own field and live by it. Suppose that 
after this arrangement had been made, one of them were to 
fall ill, and be unable to work on his land at a critical time — 
say of sowing or harvest. 

He would naturally ask the other to sow or reap for him. 

Then his companion might say, with perfect justice, "I 



52 THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 

will do this additional work for you ; but if I do it, you must 
promise to do as much for me at another time. I will count 
how many hours I spend on your ground, and you shall give 
me a written promise to work for the same number of hours 
on mine, whenever I need your help, and you are able to 
give it." 

Suppose the disabled man's sickness to continue, and that 
under various circumstances, for several years, requiring the 
help of the other, he on each occasion gave a written pledge 
to work, as 'soon as he was able, at his companion's orders, 
for the same number of hours which the other had given up 
to him. What will the positions of the two men be when 
the invalid is able to resume work ? 

Considered as a " Polis," or state, they will be poorer than 
they would have been otherwise : poorer by the withdrawal 
of what the sick man's labour would have produced in the 
interval. His friend may perhaps have toiled with an energy 
quickened by the enlarged need, but in the end his own laud 
and property must have suffered by the withdrawal of so 
much of his time and thought from them ; and the united 
property of the two men will be certainly less than it would 
have been if both had remained in health and activity. 

But the relations in which they stand to each other are 
also widely altered. The sick man has not only pledged his 
labour for some years, but will probably have exhausted his 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 53 

own share of the accumulated stores, and will be in conse- 
quence for some time dependent on the other for food, which 
he can only " pay " or reward him for by yet more deeply 
pledging his own labour. 

Supposing the written promises to be held entirely rabid 
(among civilized nations their validity is secured by legal 
measures*), the person who had hitherto worked for both 
might now, if he chose, rest altogether, and pass his time in 
idleness, not only forcing his companion to redeem all the 
engagements he had already entered into, but exacting from 
him pledges for further labour, to an arbitrary amount, for 
what food he had to advance to him. 

There might not, from first to last, be the least illegality 

* The disputes which exist respecting the real nature of money arise 
more from the disputants examining its functions on different sides, than 
from any real dissent in their opinions. All money, properly so called, is 
an acknowledgment of debt ; but as such, it may either be considered to 
represent the labour and property of the creditor, or the idleness and 
penury *of the debtor. The intrieacy of the question has been much 
increased by the (hitherto necessary) use of marketable commodities, such 
as gold, silver, salt, shells, <fcc., to give intrinsic value or security to cur- 
rency ; but the final and best definition of money is that it is a docu- 
mentary promise ratified and guaranteed by the nation to give or find a 
certain quantity of labour on demand. A man's labour for a day is a better 
standard of value than a measure of any produce, because no produce ever 
maintains a consistent rate of productibility. 



54 THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 

(in the ordinary sense of the word) in the arrangement ; 
but if a stranger arrived on the coast at this advanced 
epoch of their political economy, lie would find one man 
commercially Rich ; the other commercially Poor. He 
would see, perhaps with no small surprise, one passing his 
days in idleness; the other labouring for both, and living 
sparely, in the hope of recovering his independence, at 
some distant period. 

This is, of course, an example of one only out of many 
ways in which inequality of possession may be established 
between different persons, giving rise to the mercantile forms 
of Riches and Poverty. In the instance before us, one of 
the men might from the first have deliberately chosen to 
be idle, and to put his life in pawn for present ease ; or he 
might have mismanaged his land, and been compelled to 
bave recourse to bis neighbour for food and help, pledging 
bis future labour for it. But what I want the reader to 
note especially is the fact, common to a large number of 
typical cases of this kind, that the establishment *of the 
mercantile wealth which consists in a claim upon labour, 
signifies a political diminution of the real wealth which 
consists in substantial possessions. 

Take another example, more consistent with the ordinary 
course of affairs of trade. Supj)ose that three men, instead 
of two, formed the little isolated republic, and found them- 



THE VEINS OF "WEALTH. 55 

selves obliged to separate in order to farm different pieces 
of land at some distance from each other along the coast ; 
each estate furnishing a distinct kind of produce, and each 
more or less in need of the material raised on the other. 
Suppose that the third man, in order to save the time of 
all three, undertakes simply to superintend the transference 
of commodities from one farm to the other ; on condition 
of receiving some sufficiently remunerative share of every 
parcel of goods conveyed, or of some other parcel received 
in exchange for it. 

If this carrier or messenger always brings to each estate, 
from the other, what is chiefly wanted, at the right time, 
the operations of the two farmers will go on prosperously, 
and the largest possible result in produce, or wealth, will 
be attained by the little community. But suppose no inter- 
course between the land owners is possible, except through 
the travelling agent ; and that, after a time, this agent, 
watching the course of each man's agriculture, keeps back 
the articles with which he has been entrusted until there 
comes a period of extreme necessity for them, on one side 
or other, and then exacts in exchange for them all that 
the distressed farmer can spare of other kinds of produce ; 
it is easy to see that by ingeniously watching his oppor- 
tunities, he might possess himself regularly of the greater 
part of the superfluous produce of the two estates, and at 



56 AD VALOREM. 

last, in some year of severest trial or scarcity, purchase 
Loth for himself, and maintain the former proprietors thence- 
forward as his labourers or his servants. 

This would be a case of commercial wealth acquired on 
the exactest principles of modern political economy. But 
more distinctly even than in the former instance, it is mani- 
fest in this that the wealth of the State, or of the three 
men considered as a society, is collectively less than it 
would have been had the merchant been content with juster 
profit. The operations of the two agriculturists have been 
cramped to the utmost; and the continual limitations of 
the supply of things they wanted at critical times, together 
with the failure of courage consequent on the prolongation 
of a struggle for mere existence, without any sense of per- 
manent gain, must have seriously diminished the effective 
results of their labour ; and the stores finally accumulated 
in the merchant's hands will not in anywise be of equivalent 
value to those which, had his dealings been honest, would 
have filled at once the granaries of the farmers and his own. 

The whole question, therefore, respecting not only the 
advantage, but even the quantity, of national wealth, resolves 
itself finally into one of abstract justice. It is impossible to 
conclude, of any given mass of acquired wealth, merely by 
the fact of its existence, whether- it signifies good or evil 
to the nation in the midst of which it exists. Its real value 



THE VEIN'S OF WEALTH. 57 

depends on the moral sign attached to it, just as sternly as 
that of a mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical 
sign attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial 
wealth may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful 
industries, progressive energies, and productive ingenuities; 
or, on the other, it may be indicative of mortal luxury, 
merciless tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some treasures are 
heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored harvest with 
untimely rain ; and some gold is brighter in sunshine than 
it is in substance. 

And these are not, observe, merely moral or pathetic attri- 
butes of riches, which the seeker of riches may, if he chooses, 
despise ; they are literally and sternly, material attributes of 
riches, depreciating or exalting, incalculably, the monetary 
signification of the sum in question. One mass of money is 
the outcome of action which has created, — another, of action 
which has annihilated, — ten times as much in the gathering 
of it ; such and such strong hands have been paralyzed, as if 
they had been numbed by nightshade : so many strong men's 
courage broken, so many productive operations hindered ; this 
and the other false direction given to labour, and lying image 
of prosperity set up, on Dura plains dug into seven-times- 
heated furnaces. That which seems to be wealth may in 
verity be only the gilded index of far-reaching ruin ; a 

wrecker's handful of coin gleaned from the beach to which he 

3* 



58 THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 

has beguiled an argosy; a camp-follower's bundle of rags 
uuwrapped from the breasts of goodly soldiers dead ; the 
purchase-pieces of potter's fields, wherein shall be buried 
together the citizen and the stranger. 

And therefore, the idea that directions can be given for the 
gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of its 
moral sources, or that any general and technical law of pur- 
chase and gain can be set down for national practice, is perhaps 
the most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through 
their vices. So far as I know, there is not in history record 
of anything so disgraceful to the human intellect as the 
modern idea that the commercial text, " Buy in the cheapest 
market and sell in the dearest," represents, or under any cir- 
cumstances could represent, an available principle of national 
economy. Buy in the cheapest market? — yes; but what 
made your market cheap ? Charcoal may be cheap among 
your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in 
your streets after an earthquake ; but fire and earthquake may 
not therefore be national benefits. Sell in the dearest ? — yes, 
truly ; but what made your market dear ? You sold your 
bread well to-day ; was it to a dying man who gave his last 
coin for it, and will never need bread more, or to a rich man 
who to-morrow will buy your farm over your head ; or to a 
soldier on his way to pillage the bank in which you have put 
your fortune ? 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 59 

None of these things you can know. One thing only you 
can know, namely, whether this dealing of yours is a just and 
faithful one, which is all you need concern yourself about 
respecting it ; sure thus to have done your own part in bring- 
ing about ultimately in the world a state of things which will 
not issue in pillage or in death. And thus every question 
concerning these things merges itself ultimately in the great 
question of justice, which, the ground being thus far cleared 
for it, I will enter upon in the next paper, leaving only, in 
this, three final points for the reader's consideration. 

It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of money 
consists in its having power over human beings ; that, with- 
out this power, large material possessions are useless, and to 
any person possessing such power, comparatively unnecessary. 
But power over human beings is attainable by other means 
than by money. As I said a few pages back, the money 
power is always imperfect and doubtful ; there are many 
things which cannot be retained by it. Many joys may be 
given to men which cannot be bought for gold, and many 
fidelities found in them which cannot be rewarded with it. 

Trite enough, — the reader thinks. Yes : but it is not so 
trite, — I wish it were, — that in this moral power, quite in- 
scrutable and immeasurable though it be, there is a monetary 
value just as real as that represented by more ponderous 
currencies. A man's hand may be full of invisible gold, and 



60 THE VEINS OP WEALTH. 

the wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than another's 
with a shower of bullion. This invisible gold, also, does not 
necessarily diminish in spending. Political economists will 
do well some day to take heed of it, though they cannot take 
measure. 

But farther. Since the essence of wealth consists in its 
authority over men, if the apparent or nominal wealth fail in 
this power, it fails in essence ; in fact, ceases to be wealth at 
all. It does not appear lately in England, that our authority 
over men is absolute. The servants show some disposition 
to rush riotously upstairs, under an impression that their 
wages are not regularly paid. We should augur ill of any 
gentleman's property to whom this happened every other 
day in his drawing-room. 

So also, the power of our wealth seems limited as respects 
the comfort of the servants, no less than their quietude. The 
persons in the kitchen appear to be ill-dressed, squalid, half- 
starved. One cannot help imagining that the riches of the 
establishment must be of a very theoretical and documentary 
character. 

Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in power over 
men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more in num- 
ber the persons are over whom it has power, the greater the 
wealth ? Perhaps it may even appear after some consider 
ation, that the persons themselves are the wealth — that these 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. Gl 

pieces of gold with which we are in the habit of guiding 
them, are, in fact, nothing more than a kind of Byzantine 
harness or trappings, very glittering and beautiful in barbaric 
sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures ; but that if these 
same living creatures could be guided without the fretting 
and jingling of the Byzants in their mouths and ears, they 
might themselves be more valuable than their bridles. In 
fact, it may be discovered that the true veins of wealth are 
purple — and not in Rock, but in Flesh — perhaps even that 
the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the 
producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and 
happy-hearted human creatures. Our modern wealth, I 
think, has rather a tendency the other way ; — most political 
economists appearing to consider multitudes of human crea- 
tures not conducive to wealth, or at best conducive to it only 
by remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow-chested state of 
being. 

Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, 
which I leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among 
national manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may 
not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one ? Nay, 
in some far-away and "yet undreamt-of hour, I can even 
imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive 
wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first 
arose ; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant 



62 THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 

of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, 
and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian 
mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures 
of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, 
saying,— 

" These are my Jewels." 



essay in. 

QUI JUDICATIS TERR AM. 
Some centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant 
largely engaged in business on the Gold Coast, and report- 
ed to have made one of the largest fortunes of his time 
(held also in repute for much practical sagacity), left among 
his ledgers some general maxims concerning wealth, which 
have been preserved, strangely enough, even to our own 
days. They were held in considerable respect by the most 
active traders of the middle ages, especially by the Vene- 
tians, who even went so far in their admiration as to place 
a statue of the old Jew on the angle of one of their prin- 
cipal public buildings. Of late years these writings have 
fallen into disrepute, being opposed in every particular to 
the spirit of modern commerce. Nevertheless I shall repro- 
duce a passage or two from them here, partly because they 
may interest the reader by their novelty; and chiefly 
because they will show him that it is possible for a very 
practical and acquisitive tradesman to hold, through a not 
unsuccessful career, that principle of distinction between 
well-gotten and ill-gotten wealth, which, partially insisted 



64 QUI JUDICATIS TERR AM. 

on in my last paper, it must be our work more completely 
to examine in this. 

He says, for instance, in one place: "The getting of 
treasure by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro 
of them that seek death :" adding in another, with the 
same meaning (he has a curious way of doubling his say- 
ings) : "Treasures of wickedness profit nothing; but justice 
delivers from death." Both these passages are notable for 
their assertion of death as the only real issue and sum of 
attainment by any unjust scheme of wealth. If we read, 
instead of "lying tongue," "lying label, title, pretence, or 
advertisement," we shall more clearly perceive the bearing 
of the words on modern business. The seeking of death 
is a grand expression of the true course of men's toil in 
such business. We usually speak as if death pursued us, 
and we fled from him ; but that is only so in rare instan- 
ces. Ordinarily, he masks himself — makes himself beautiful 
— all-glorious; not like the King's daughter, all-glorious 
within, but outwardly : his clothing of wrought gold. We 
pursue him frantically all our days, he flying or hiding 
from us. Our crowning success at three-score and ten is 
utterly and perfectly to seize, and hold him in his eternal 
integrity — robes, ashes, and sting. 

Again : the merchant says, " He that oppresseth the poor 
to increase his riches, shall surely come to want." And 



QUI JUDICATIS TERR AM. 65 

again, more strongly: "Rob not the poor because lie is 
poor ; neither oppress the afflicted in the place of business. 
For God shall spoil the soul of those that spoiled them." 

This " robbing the poor because he is poor," is especially 
the mercantile form of theft, consisting in taking advantage 
of a man's necessities in order to obtain his labour or pro- 
perty at a reduced price. The ordinary highwayman's oppo- 
site form of robbery — of the rich, because he is rich — does 
not appear to occur so often to the old merchant's mind ; 
probably because, being less profitable and more dangerous 
than the robbery of the poor, it is rarely practised by persons 
of discretion. 

But the two most remarkable passages in their deep gene- 
ral significance are the following : — 

" The rich and the poor have met. God is their maker." 
" The rich and the poor have met. God is their light." 
They "have met:" more literally, have stood in each 
other's way (obviaverunt). * That is to say, as long as the 
world lasts, the action and counteraction of wealth and 
poverty, the meeting, face to face, of rich and poor, is just as 
appointed and necessary a law of that world as the flow of 
stream to sea, or the interchange of power among the elec- 
tric clouds : — " God is their maker." But, also, this action 
may be either gentle and just, or convulsive and destructive : 
it may be by rage of devouring flood, or by lapse of service- 



66 QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. 

able wave ; — in blackness of thunderstroke, or continual force 
of vital fire, soft, and sbapeable into love -syllables from 
far away. Aud which of these it shall be depends on both 
rich and poor knowing that God is their light ; that in the 
mystery of human life, there is no other light than this by 
which they can see each other's faces, and live ; — light, which 
is called in another of the books among which the merchant's 
maxims have been preserved, the "sun of justice,"* of which 
it is promised that it shall rise at last with " healing " (health- 
giving or helping, making whole or setting at one) in its 
wings. For truly this healing is only possible by means of 
justice ; no love, no faith, no hope will do it ; men will be 

* More accurately, Sun of Justness ; but, instead of the harsh word 
"Justness," the old English "Righteousness" being commonly employed, 
has, by getting confused with "godliness," or attracting about it various 
vague and broken meanings, prevented most persons from receiving the 
force of the passages in -which it occurs. The word " righteousness " pro- 
perly refers to the justice of rule, or right, as distinguished from "equity," 
which refers to the justice of balance. More broadly, Righteousness is 
King's justice ; and Equity, Judge's justice ; the King guiding or ruling all, 
the Judge dividing or discerning between opposites (therefore, the double 
question, " Man, who made me a ruler — <J(/caem;r — or a divider — ^piori/r — 
over you ?") Thus, with respect to the Justice of Choice (selection, the 
feebler and passive justice), we have from lego, — lex, legal, loi, and loyal ; 
and with respect to the Justice of Rule (direction, the stronger and active 
justice), we have from rego, — rex, regal, roi, and royal. 



QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 67 

unwisely fond — vainly faithful, unless primarily they are just ; 
and the mistake of the best men through, generation after 
generation, has been that great one of thinking to help the 
poor by almsgiving, and by preaching of patience or of hope, 
and by every other means, emollient or consolatory, except 
the one thing which God orders for them, justice. But this 
justice, with its accompanying holiness or helpfulness, being 
even by the best men denied in its trial time, is by' the mass 
of men hated wherever it appears : so that, when the choice 
was one day fairly put to them, they denied the Helpful One 
and the Just ;* and desired a murderer, sedition-raiser, and 
robber, to be granted to them ; — the murderer instead of the 
Lord of Life, the sedition-raiser instead of the Prince of 
Peace, and the robber instead of the Just Judge of all the 
world. 

I have just spoken of the flowing of streams to the sea as 
a partial image of the action of wealth. In one respect it is 
not a partial, but a perfect image. The popular economist 
thinks himself wise in having discovered that wealth, or the 
forms of property in general, must go where they are 
required ; that where demand is, supply must follow. He 
farther declares that this course of demand and supply cannot 
be forbidden by human laws. Precisely in the same sense, 

* In another place written with the same meaning, " Just, and having 
salvation." 



68 QUI JUDICATIS TERKAM. 

and with the same certainty, the waters of the world go 
where they are required. Where the land falls, the water 
flows. The course neither of clouds nor rivers can be forbid- 
den by human will. But the disposition and administration 
of them can be altered by human forethought. Whether the 
stream shall be a curse or a blessing, depends upon man's 
labour, and administrating intelligence. For centuries after 
centuries, great districts of the world, rich in soil, and 
favoured in climate, have lain desert under the rage of their 
own rivers ; nor only desert, but plague-struck. The stream 
which, rightly directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation 
from field to field — would have purified the air, given food to 
man and beast, and carried their burdens for them on its 
bosom — now overwhelms the plain, and poisons the wind ; 
its breath pestilence, and its work famine. In like manner 
this wealth " goes where it is required." No human laws can 
withstand its flow. They can only guide it : but this, the 
leading trench and limiting mound can do so thoroughly, 
that it shall become water of life — the riches of the hand 
of wisdom ; * or, on the contrary, by leaving it to its own 
lawless flow, they may make it, what it has been too often, the 
last and deadliest of national plagues : water of Marah — the 
water which feeds the roots of all evil. 

The necessity of these laws of distribution or restraint 
* "Length of days in her right hand; in her left, riches and honour." 



QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. 69 

is curiously overlooked in the ordinary political econo- 
mist's definition of his own " science." He calls it, shortly, 
the " science of getting rich." But there are many sciences, 
as well as many arts, of getting rich. Poisoning people of 
large estates, was one employed largely in the middle ages ; 
adulteration of food of people of small estates, is one 
employed largely now. The ancient and honourable High- 
land method of blackmail; the more modern and less honour- 
able system of obtaining goods on credit, and the other 
variously improved methods of appropriation — which, in 
major and minor scales of industry, down to the most 
artistic pocket-picking, we owe to recent genius, — all come 
under the general head of sciences, or arts, of getting rich. 

So that it is clear the popular economist, in calling his 
science the science par excellence of getting rich, must attach 
some peculiar ideas of limitation to its character. I hope I 
do not misrepresent him, by assuming that he means his 
science to be the science of " getting rich by legal or just 
means." In this definition, is the word "just," or "legal," 
finally to stand ? For it is possible among certain nations, or 
under certain rulers, or by help of certain advocates, that 
proceedings may be legal which are by no means just. If, 
therefore, we leave at last only the word "just" in that place 
of our definition, the insertion of this solitary and small word 
will make a notable difference in the grammar of our science. 



70 QUI JUD1CATIS TERRAM. 

For then it will follow that, in order to grow rich scientifically, 
we must grow rich justly; and, therefore, know what is just; 
so that our economy will no longer depend merely on 
prudence, but on jurisprudence — and that of divine, not 
human law. Which prudence is indeed of no mean order, 
holding itself, as it were, high in the air of heaven, and 
gazing for ever on the light of the sun of justice ; hence the 
souls which have excelled in it are represented by Dante as 
stars forming in heaven for ever the figure of the eye of an 
eagle : they having been in life the discerners of light from 
darkness ; or to the whole human race, as the light of the 
body, which is the eye; while those souls which form the 
wings of tflie bird (giving power and dominion to justice, 
" healing in its wings ") trace also in light the inscription in 
heaven : " diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram." " Ye 
who judge the earth, give" (not, observe, merely love, but) 
" diligent love to justice :" the love which seeks diligently, 
that is to say, choosingly, and by preference to all things else. 
Which judging or doing judgment in the earth is, according 
to their capacity and position, required not of judges only, 
nor of rulers only, but of all men :* a truth sorrowfully lost 

* I hear that several of our lawyers have been greatly amused by the 
statement in the first of these papers that a lawyer's function was to do 
justice. I do not intend it for a jest ; nevertheless it will be seen that in 
the above passage neither the determination nor doing of justice are contem- 



QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. VI 

sight of even by those who are ready enough to apply to 
themselves passages in which Christian men are spoken of as 
called to be " saints " {I.e. to helpful or healing functions) ; 
and " chosen to be kings " (i.e. to knowing or directing 
functions) ; the true meaning of these titles having been long 
lost through the pretences of unhelpful and unable persons 
to saintly and kingly character; also through the once 
popular idea that both the sanctity and royalty are to consist 
in wearing long robes and high crowns, instead of in mercy 
and judgment ; whereas all true sanctity is saving power, as 
all true royalty is ruling power; and injustice is part and 
parcel of the denial of such power, which " makes men as 
the creeping things, as the fishes of the sea, that have no 
ruler over them." * 

Absolute justice is indeed no more attainable than absolute 
truth ; but the righteous man is distinguished from the 
unrighteous by his desire and hope of justice, as the true 

plated as functions wholly peculiar to the lawyer. Possibly, the more our 
standing armies, whether of soldiers, pastors, or legislators (the generic term 
"pastor" including all teachers, and the generic term " lawyer " including 
makers as well as interpreters of law), can be superseded by the force of 
national heroism, wisdom, and honesty, the better it may be for the natiou. 
* It being the privilege of the fishes, as it is of rats and wolves, to five 
by the laws of demand and supply ; but the distinction of humanity, to five 
by those of right. 



12 QUI JUDICATIS TERR AM. 

man from the false by his desire and hope of truth. And 
though absolute justice be unattainable, as much justice as 
we need for all practical use is attainable by all those who 
make it their aim. 

We Lave to examine, then, in the subject before us, what 
are the laws of justice respecting payment of labour — no 
small part, these, of the foundations of all jurisprudence. 

I reduced, in my last paper, the idea of money payment to 
its simplest or radical terms. In those terms its nature, and 
the conditions of justice respecting it, can be best ascertained. 

Money payment, as there stated, consists radically in a 
promise to some person working for us, that for the time 
and labour he spends in our service to-day we will give or 
procure equivalent time and labour in his service at any 
future time when he may demand it.* 

* It might appear at first that the market price of labour expressed such 
an exchange : taut this is a fallacy, for the market price is the momentary- 
price of the kind of lataour required, but the just price is its equivalent 
of the productive labour of mankind. This difference will be analyzed in 
its place. It must be noted also that I speak here only of the exchange- 
able value of labour, not of that of commodities. The exchangeable value 
of a commodity is that of the labour required to produce it, multiplied 
iuto the force of the demand for it. If the value of the labour = x and 
the force of the demand = y, the exchangeable value of the commodity 
is x y, in which if either x = 0, or y = 0, xy = 



QUI JUDIOATIS TERRAM. 73 

If we promise to give him less labour than he has given 
us, we under-pay him. If' we promise to give him more 
labour than he has given us, we over-pay hitn. In practice, 
according to the laws of demand and supply, when two 
men are ready to do the work, and only one man wants 
to have it done, the two men underbid each Other for it ; 
and the one who gets it to do, is under-paid. But when 
two men want the work done, and there is only one man 
ready to do it, the two men who want it done over-bid 
each other, and the workman is over-paid. 

I will examine these two points of injustice in succession ; 
but first I wish the reader to clearly understand the central 
principle, lying between the two, of right or just payment. 

"When we ask a service of any man, he may either 
give it us freely, or demand payment for it. Respecting 
free gift of service, there is no question at present, that 
being a matter of affection — not of traffic. But if* he demand 
payment for it, and we wish to treat him with absolute 
equity, it is evident that this equity can only consist in 
giving time for time, strength for strength, and skill for 
skill. If a man works an hour for us, and we only promise 
to work half-an-hour for him in return, we obtain an unjust 
advantage. If, on the contrary, we promise to work an 
hour and a half for him in return, he has an unjust advan- 
tage. The justice consists in absolute exchange ; or, if 

4 



74 QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 

there be any respect to the stations of the parties, it will 
not be in favour of the employer : there is certainly no 
equitable reason in a man's being poor, that if he give me 
a pound of bread to-day, I should return him less than a 
pound of bread to-morrow ; or any equitable reason in a 
man's being uneducated, that if he uses a certain quantity 
of skill and knowledge in my service, I should use a less 
quantity of skill and knowledge in his. Perhaps, ultimately, 
it may appear desirable, or, to say the least, gracious, that 
I should give in return somewhat more than I received. 
But at present, we are concerned on the law of justice only, 
which is that of perfect and accurate exchange ; — one cir- 
cumstance only interfering with the simplicity of this radical 
idea of just payment — that inasmuch as labour (rightly 
directed) is fruitful just as seed is, the fruit (or "interest," 
as it is called) of the labour first given, or " advanced," 
ought to be taken into account, and balanced by an addi- 
tional quantity of labour in the subsequent repayment. 
Supposing the repayment to take place at the end of a year, 
or of any oilier given time, this calculation could be 
approximately made ; but as money (that is to say, cash) 
payment involves no reference to time (it being optional 
with the person paid to spend what he receives at once or 
after any number of years), we can only assume, generally, 
that some slight advantage must in equity be allowed to 



QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. 15 

the person who advances the labour, so that the typical 
form of bargain will be : If you give me an hour to-day, 
I will give you an hour and five minutes on demand. If 
you give me a pound of bread to-day, I will give you 
seventeen ounces on demand, and so on. All that it is neces- 
sary for the reader to note is, that the amount returned is 
at least in equity not to be less than the amount given. 

The abstract idea, then, of just or clue wages, as respects 
the labourer, is that they will consist in a sum of money 
which will at any time procure for him at least as much labour 
as he has given, rather more than less. And this equity or 
justice of paymeut is, observe, wholly independent of any 
reference to the number of men who are willing to do the 
work. I want a horseshoe for my horse. Twenty smiths, or 
twenty thousand smiths, may be ready to forge it ; their 
number does not in one atom's weight affect the question of 
the equitable payment of the one who does forge it. It costs 
him a quarter of an hour of his life, and so much skill and 
strength of arm to make that horseshoe for me. Then at 
some future time I am bound in equity to give a quarter of 
an hour, and some minutes more, of my life (or of some other 
person's at my disposal), and also as much strength of arm 
and skill, and a little more, in making or doing what the 
smith may have need of. 

Such being the abstract theory of just remunerative pay- 



76 QUI JTTDICATIS TEKRAM. 

merit, its application is practically modified by the fact that 
the order for labour, given in payment, is general, while 
labour received is special. The current coin or document 
is practically an order on the nation for so much work of 
any kind ; and this universal applicability to immediate 
need renders it so much more valuable than special labour 
can be, that an order for a less quantity of this general toil will 
always be accepted as a just equivalent for a greater quantity 
of special toil. Any given craftsman will always be willing to 
give an hour of his own work in order to receive command 
over half-nn-hour, or even much less, of national work. This 
source of uncertainty, together with the difficulty of deter- 
mining the monetary value of skill,* renders the ascertainment 

* Under the term " skill " I mean to include the united force of experi- 
ence, intellect, and passion in their operation on manual labour : and under 
the term "passion," to include the entire range and agency of the moral 
feelings; from the simple patience and gentleness of mind which will give 
continuity and fineness to the touch, or enable one person to work without 
fatigue, and with good effect, twice as long as another, up to the qualities 
of character which render science possible — (the retardation of science by 
envy is one of the most tremendous losses in the economy of the present 
century) — and to the incommunicable emotion and imagination which are 
the first and mightiest sources of all value in art. 

It is highly singular that political economists should not yet have 
perceived, if not the moral, at least the passionate element, to be an inextri- 
cable quantity in every calculation. I cannot conceive, for instance, how it 



QUI JUDICATIS TEEEAM. 77 

(even approximate) of the proper wages of any given labour 
in terms of a currency, matter of considerable complexity. 
But they do not affect the principle of exchange. The worth 
of the work may not be easily known; but it has a worth, 
just as fixed and real as the specific gravity of a substance, 
though such specific gravity may not be easily ascertainable 

was possible that Mr. Mill should have followed the true clue so far as to 
write, — "No limit can be set to the importance — even in a purely productive 
and material point of view — of mere thought," without seeing that it was 
logically necessary to add also, "and of mere feeling." And this the more, 
because in his first definition of labour he includes in the idea of it "all 
feelings of a disagreeable kind connected with the employment of one's 
thoughts in a particular occupation." True; but why not also, "feelings 
of an agreeable kind?" It can hardly be supposed that the feelings which 
retard labour are more essentially a part of the labour than those which 
accelerate it. The first are paid for as pain, the second as power. The 
workman is merely indemnified for the first ; but the second both produce 
a part of the exchangeable value of the work, and materially increase its 
actual quantity. 

"Fritz is with us. He is worth fifty thousand men." Truly, a large 
addition to the material force ; — consisting, however, be it observed, not 
more in operations carried on in Fritz's head, than in operations carried on 
in his armies' heart. "No limit can be set to the importance of mere 
thought." Perhaps not! Nay, suppose some day it should turn out that 
"mere" thought was in itself a recommendable object of production, and 
that all Material production was only a step towards this more precious 
Immaterial one ? 



78 QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. 

when the substance is united with many others. Nor is there 
any difficulty or chance in determining it as in determining 
the ordinary maxima and minima of vulgar political economy. 
There are few bargains in which the buyer can ascertain with 
anything like precision that the seller would have taken no 
less ; — or the seller acquire more than a comfortable faith that 
the purchaser would have given no more. This impossibility 
of precise knowledge prevents neither from striving to attain 
the desired point of greatest vexation and injury to the 
other, nor from accepting it for a scientific principle that he is 
to buy for the least and sell for the most possible, though what 
the real least or most may be he cannot tell. In like manner, 
a just person lays it down for a scientific principle that he is 
to pay a just price, and, without being able precisely to 
ascertain the limits of such a price, will nevertheless strive to 
attain the closest possible approximation to them. A practi- 
cally serviceable approximation he can obtain. It is easier to 
determine scientifically what a man ought to have for his 
work, than what his necessities will compel him to take for it. 
His necessities can only be ascertained by empirical, but his 
due by analytical investigation. In the one case, you try your 
answer to the sum like a puzzled schoolboy — till you find 
one that fits ; in the other, you bring out your result within 
certain limits, by, process of calculation. 

Supposing, then, the just wages of any quantity of given 



QUI JUDICATIS TER.RAM. 79 

labour to have been ascertained, let us examine the first 
results of just and unjust payment, when in favour of the 
purchaser or employer ; i. e. when two men are ready to 
do the work, and only one wants to have it done. 

The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against each 
other till he has reduced their demand to its lowest terms. 
Let us assume that the lowest bidder offers to do the work 
at half its just price. 

The purchaser employs him, and does not employ the 
other. The first or apparent result is, therefore, that one 
of the two men is left out of employ, or to starvation, just 
as definitely as by the just procedure of giving fair price 
to the best workman. The various writers who endeavoured 
to invalidate the positions of my first paper never saw this, 
and assumed that the unjust hirer employed both. He employs 
both no more than the just hirer. The only difference (in 
the outset) is that the just man pays sufficiently, the unjust 
man insufficiently, for the labour of the single person employed. 

I say, "in the outset;" for this first or apparent differ- 
ence is not the actual difference. By the unjust procedure, 
half the proper price of the work is left in the hands of 
the employer. This enables him to hire another man at 
the same unjust rate, on some other kind of work ; and 
the final result is that he has two men working for him at 
half price, and two are out of employ. 



80 QUI JUDICATrS TERR AM. 

By the just procedure, the whole price of the first piece 
of work goes into the hands of the man who does it. No 
surplus being left in the employer's hands, he cannot hire 
another man for another piece of labour. But by precisely 
so much as his power is diminished, tbe hired workman's 
power is increased; that is to say, by the additional half 
of the price he has received ; which additional half he has 
the power of using to employ another man in his service. 
I will suppose, for the moment, the least favourable, though 
quite probable, case — that, though justly treated himself, 
he yet will act unjustly to his subordinate ; and hire at 
half-price, if he can. The final result will then be, that one 
man works for the employer, at just price; one for the 
workman, at half-price ; and two, as in the first case, are 
still out of employ. These two, as I said before, are out 
of employ in both cases. The difference between the just 
and unjust procedure does not lie in the number of men 
hired, but in the price paid to them, and the persons by 
tohom it is paid. The essential difference, that which I 
want the reader to see clearly, is, that in the uujust case, 
two men work for one, the first hirer. In the just case, 
one man works for the first hirer, one for the person hired, 
and so on, down or up through the various grades of ser- 
vice ; the influence being carried forward by justice, and 
arrested by injustice. The universal and constant action of 



QDI JUDICATIS TERR AM. 81 

justice in this matter is therefore to diminish the power 
of wealth, in the hands of one individual, over masses of 
men, and to distribute it through a chain of men. The 
actual power exerted by the wealth is the same in both 
cases ; but by injustice it is put all in one man's hands, so 
that he directs at once and with equal force the labour of 
a circle of men about him ; by the just procedure, he is 
permitted to touch the nearest only, through whom, with 
diminished force, modified by new minds, the energy of 
the wealth passes on to others, and so till it exhausts 
itself. 

The immediate operation of justice in this respect is there- 
fore to diminish the power of wealth, first in acquisition 
of luxury, and, secondly, in exercise of moral influence. 
The employer cannot concentrate so multitudinous labour 
on his own interests, nor can he subdue so multitudinous 
mind to his own will. But the secondary operation of 
justice is not less important. The insufficient payment of 
the group of men working for one, places each under a 
maximum of difficulty in rising above his position. The 
tendency of the system is to check advancement. But the 
sufficient or just payment, distributed through a descending 
series of offices or grades of labour,* gives each subordinated 

* I am sorry to lose time by answering, however curtly, the equivo- 
cations of the writers who sought to obscure the instances given of 



82 QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 

person fair and sufficient means of rising in the social scale, 
if he chooses to use them ; and thus not only diminishes 
the immediate power of wealth, but removes the worst 
disabilities of poverty. 

It is on this vital problem that the entire destiny of the 
labourer is ultimately dependent. Many minor interests 

regulated labour iu the first of these papers, by confusing kinds, ranks, 
and quantities of labour with its qualities. I never said that a colonel 
should have the same pay as a private, nor a bishop the same pay as a 
curate. Neither did I say that more work ought to be paid as less 
work (so that the curate of a parish of two thousand souls should have 
no more than the curate of a parish of five hundred). But I said that, 
so far as you employ it at all, bad work should be paid no less than 
good work; as a bad clergyman yet takes his tithes, a bad physician 
takes his fee, and a bad lawyer his costs. And this, as will be farther 
shown in the conclusion, I said, and say, partly because the best work 
never was nor ever will be, done for money at all; but chiefly because, 
the moment people know they have to pay the bad and good alike, 
they will try to discern the one from the other, and not use the bad. 
A sagacious writer in the Scotsman asks me if I should like any common 
scribbler to be paid by Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. as their good 
authors are. I should, if they employed him — but would seriously recom- 
mend them, for the scribbler's sake, as well as their own, not to employ 
him. The quantity of its money which the country at present invests in 
scribbling is not, in the outcome of it, economically spent ; and even the 
highly ingenious person to whom this question occurred, might perhaps 
have been more beneficially employed than in printing it. 



QUI JTJDICATIS TERR AM. 83 

may sometimes appear to interfere with it, but all branch 
from it. For instance, considerable agitation is often caused 
in the minds of the lower classes when they discover the 
share which they nominally, and, to all appearance, actually, 
pay out of their wages in taxation (I believe thirty-five or 
forty per cent.). This sounds very grievous ; but in reality 
the labourer does not pay it, but his employer. If the 
workman had not to pay it, his wages would be less by 
just that sum : competition would still reduce them to the 
lowest rate at which life was possible. Similarly the lower 
orders agitated for the repeal of the corn laws,* thinking 

* I have to acknowledge an interesting communication on the subject 
of free trade from Paisley (for a short letter from "A "Well-wisher" at 

, my thanks are yet more due). But the Scottish writer will, I fear, 

be disagreeably surprised to hear, that I am, and always have been, an 
utterly fearless and unscrupulous free-trader. Seven years ago, speaking 
of the various signs of infancy in the European mind {Stones of Venice, 
vol. iii. p. 168), I wrote: "The first principles of commerce were acknow- 
ledged by the English parliament only a few montbs ago, and in its free- 
trade measures, and are still so little understood by the million, that no 
nation dares to abolish its custom-houses." 

It will be observed that I do not admit even the idea of reciprocity. 
Let other nations, if they like, keep their ports shut ; every wise nation 
will throw its own open. It is not the opening them, but a sudden, 
inconsiderate, and blunderingly experimental manner of opening them, 
which does the harm. If you have been protecting a manufacture for 



84 QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. 

they would be better off if bread were cheaper ; never 
perceiving that as soon as bread was permanently cheaper, 
wages would permanently fall in precisely that proportion. 
The corn laws were rightly repealed ; not, however, because 
they directly oppressed the poor, but because they indirectly 
oppressed them in causing a large quantity of their labour 
to be consumed unproductively. So also unnecessary tax- 
long series of years, you must not take protection off in a moment, so 
as to throw every one of its operatives at once out of employ, any more 
than you must take all its wrappings off a feeble child at once in cold 
weather, though the cumber of them may have been radically injuring 
its health. Little by little, you must restore it to freedom and to air. 

Most people's minds are in curious confusion on the subject of free 
trade, because they suppose it to imply enlarged competition. On the 
contrary, free trade puts an end to all competition. " Protection " (among 
various other mischievous functions) endeavours to enable one country to 
compete with another in the production of an article at a disadvantage- 
When trade is entirely free, no country can be competed with in the 
-articles for the productiou of which it is naturally calculated; nor can it 
compete with any other in the production of articles for which it is not 
naturally calculated. Tuscany, for instance, cannot compete with England 
in steel, nor England with Tuscany in oil. They must exchange their 
steel and oil. "Which exchange should be as frank and free as honesty 
and the sea-winds can make it. Competition, indeed, arises at first, and 
sharply, in order to prove which is strongest in any given manufacture 
possible to both; this point once ascertained, competition is at an end. 



QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 85 

ation oppresses them, through destruction of capital, but 
the destiny of the poor dej)ends primarily always on this 
one question of dueness of wages. Their distress (irrespec- 
tively of that caused by sloth, minor error, or crime) arises 
on the grand scale from the two reacting forces of com- 
petition and oppression. There is not yet, nor will yet for 
ages be, any real over-population in the world ; but a local 
over-population, or, more accurately, a degree of population 
locally unmanageable under existing circumstances for want 
of forethought and sufficient machinery, necessarily shows 
itself by pressure of competition ; and the taking advantage 
of this competition by the purchaser to obtain their labour 
unjustly cheap, consummates at once their suffering and his 
own ; for in this (as I believe in every other kind of slavery) 
the oppressor suffers at last more than the oppressed, and 
those magnificent lines of Pope, even in all their force, 
fall short of the truth — 

" Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, 
Each does but hate his neighbour as himself : 
Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides 
The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides." 

The collateral and reversionary operations of justice in this 
matter I shall examine hereafter (it being needful first to define 
the nature of value) ; proceeding then to consider within 
what practical terms a juster system may be established ; and 



86 QUI JUDICATIS TERR AM. 

ultimately the vexed question of the destinies of the unem- 
ployed workmen.* Lest, however, the reader should be 
alarmed at some of the issues to which our investigations 
seem to be tending, as if in their bearing against the power of 

* I should be glad if the reader would first clear the ground for himself 
so far as to determine whether the difficulty lies in getting the work or 
getting the pay for it. Does he consider occupation itself to be an 
expensive luxury, difficult of attainment, of which too little is to be found 
in the world? or is it rather that, while in the enjoyment even of the most 
athletic delight, men must nevertheless be maintained, and this mainte- 
nance is not always forthcoming ? "We must be clear on this head before 
going farther, as most people are loosely in the habit of talking of the diffi- 
culty of "finding employment." Is it employment that we want to find, or 
support during employment ? Is it idleness we wish to put an end to, or 
hunger? We have to take up both questions in succession, only not both 
at the same time. No doubt that work is a luxury, and a very great one. 
It is, indeed, at once a luxury and a necessity; no man can retain either 
health of mind or body without it. So profoundly do I feel this, that, as 
will be seen in the sequel, one of the principal objects I would recommend 
to benevolent and practical persons, is to induce rich people to seek for a 
larger quantity of this luxury than they at present possess. Nevertheless, 
it appears by experience that even this healthiest of pleasures may be 
indulged in to excess, and that human beings are just as liable to surfeit 
of labour as to surfeit of meat ; so that, as on the one hand, it may be 
charitable to provide, for some people, lighter dinner, and more work, — for 
others it may be equally expedient to provide fighter work, and more 
dinner. 



QUI JUDICATTS TERR AM. 87 

wealth they had something in common with those of social- 
ism, I wish him to know, in accurate terms, one or two of 
the main points which I have in view. 

Whether socialism has made more progress among the 
army and navy (where payment is made on my principles), or 
among the manufacturing operatives (who are paid on my 
opponents' principles), I leave it to those opponents to ascer- 
tain and declare. Whatever their conclusion may be, I think 
it necessary to answer for myself only this : that if there he 
any one point insisted on throughout my works more fre- 
quently than another, that one point is the impossibility of 
Equality. My continual aim has been to show the eternal 
superiority of some men to others, sometimes even of one 
man to all others ; and to show also the advisability of 
appointing such persons or person to guide, to lead, or on 
occasion even to compel and subdue, their inferiors, according 
to their own better knowledge and wiser will. My principles 
of Political Economy were all involved in a single phrase 
spoken three years ago at Manchester : " Soldiers of the 
Ploughshare as well as soldiers of the Sword:" and they 
were all summed in a single sentence in the last volume of 
Modem Painters — " Government and co-operation are in all 
things the Laws of Life ; Anarchy and competition the Laws 
of Death." 

And with respect to the mode in which these general prin- 



88 QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. 

ciples affect the secure possession of property, so far am I 
from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these 
papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its 
range; and whereas it has long been known and declared 
that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I 
wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no 
right to the property of the poor. 

But that the working of the system which I have under- 
taken to develop would in many ways shorten the apparent 
and direct, though not the unseen and collateral, power, both 
of wealth, as the Lady of Pleasure, and of capital as the Lord 
of Toil, I do not deny : on the contrary, I affirm it in all joy- 
fnlness ; knowing that the attraction of riches is already too 
strong, as their authority is already too weighty, for the 
reason of mankind. I said in my last paper that nothing in 
history had ever been so disgraceful to human intellect as the 
acceptance among us of the common doctrines of political 
economy as a science. I have many grounds for saying this, 
but one of the chief may be given in few words. I know no 
previous instance in history of a nation's establishing a system- 
atic disobedience to the first principles of its professed reli- 
gion. The writings which we (verbally) esteem as divine, 
not only denounce the love of money as the source of all evil, 
and as an idolatry abhorred of the Deity, but declare mammon 
service to be the accurate and irreconcileable opposite of 



QUI JUDICATTS TERKAM. 89 

God's service : and, whenever they speak of riches absolute, 
and poverty absolute, declare woe to the rich, and blessing to 
the poor. Whereupon we forthwith investigate a science of 
becoming rich, as the shortest road to national prosperity. 

" Tai Cristian dannera l'Etiope, 
Quando si partiranno i due collegi, 

L'UNO IN ETERNO R1CCO, E LALTRO INOPE.'' 



ESSAY IV. 

AD VALOREM. 

In" the last paper we saw that just payment of labour 
consisted in a sum of money which would approximately 
obtain equivalent labour at a future time : we have now 
to examine the means of obtaining such equivalence. 
Which question involves the definition of Value, Wealth, 
Price, and Produce. 

None of these terms are yet defined so as to be understood 
by the public. But the last, Produce, which one might have 
thought the clearest of all, is, in use, the most ambiguous ; 
and the examination of the kind of ambiguity attendant 
on its present employment will best open the way to our 
work. 

In his chapter on Capital,* Mr. J. S. Mill instances, as 
a capitalist, a hardware manufacturer, who, having intended 
to spend a certain portion of the proceeds of his business 
in buying plate and jewels, changes his mind, and "pays it as 

* Book I. chap. iv. s. 1. To save space, my future references to Mr. Mill's 
•work will be by numerals only, as in this instance, I. iv. 1. Ed. in 2 vols. 
8vo. Parker, 1848. 



AD VALOREM. 91 

wages to additional workpeople." The effect is stated by- 
Mr. Mill to be, that " more food is appropriated to the con- 
sumption of productive labourers." 

Now, I do not ask, though, had I written this paragraph, 
it would surely have been asked of me, What is to become 
of the silversmiths? If they are truly unproductive persons, 
we will acquiesce in their extinction. And though in another 
part of the same passage, the hardware merchant is supposed 
also to dispense with a number of servants, whose " food is 
thus set free for productive purposes," I do not inquire what 
will be the effect, painful or otherwise, upon the servants, 
of this emancipation of their food. But I very seriously 
inquire why ironware is produce, and silverware is not? 
That the merchant consumes the one, and sells the other, 
certainly does not constitute the difference, unless it can be 
shown (which, indeed, I perceive it to be becoming daily 
more and more the aim of tradesmen to show) that commo- 
dities are made to be sold, and not to be consumed. The 
merchant is an agent of conveyance to the consumer in one 
case, and is himself the consumer in the other :* but the 

* If Mr. Mill had wished to show the difference in result between 
consumption and sale, he should have represented the hardware merchant 
as consuming his own goods instead of selling them ; similarly, the silver 
merchant as consuming his own goods instead of selling them. Had he 
done this, he would have made his position clearer, though less tenable ; 



92 AD VALOREM. 

labourers are in either case equally productive, since they 
have produced goods to the same value, if the hardware and 
the plate are both goods. 

And what distinction separates them ? It is indeed possible 
that in the " comparative estimate of the moralist," with 
which Mr. Mill says political economy has nothing to do (III. 
i. 2) a steel fork might appear a more substantial production 
than a silver one : we may grant also that knives, no less 
than forks, are good produce ; and scythes and ploughshares 
serviceable articles. But, how of bayonets ? Supposing the 
hardware merchant to effect large sales of these, by help 
of the " setting free" of the food of his servants and his 
silversmith, — is he still employing productive labourers, or, in 
Mr. Mill's words, labourers who increase " the stock of per- 
manent means of enjoyment" (I. iii. 4). Or if, instead of 
bayonets, he supply bombs, will not the absolute and final 
" enjoyment" of even these energetically productive articles 
(each of which costs ten pounds*) be dependent on a proper 
and perhaps this was the position he really intended to take, tacitly 
involving his theory, elsewhere stated, and shown in the sequel of this 
paper to be false, that demand for commodities is not demand for labour. 
But by the most diligent scrutiny of the paragraph now under examination, 
I cannot determine whether it is a fallacy pure and simple, or the half of one 
fallacy supported by the whole of a greater one ; so that I treat it here on 
the kinder assumption that it is one fallacy only. 

* I take Mr. Helps' estimate in his essay on War. 



AD VALOREM. 98 

choice of time and place for their enfantement ; choice, that 
is to say, depending on those philosophical considerations 
with which political economy has nothing to do ? * 

I should have regretted the need of pointing out inconsis- 
tency in any portion of Mr. Mill's work, had not the value of 
his work proceeded from its inconsistencies. He deserves 
honour among economists by inadvertently disclaiming the 
principles which he states, and tacitly introducing the moral 
considerations with which he declares his science has no 
connection. Many of his chapters are, therefore, true and 
valuable ; and the only conclusions of his which I have to 
dispute are those which follow from his premises. 

Thus, the idea which lies at the root of the passage we have 
just been examining, namely, that labour applied to produce 
luxuries will not support so many persons as labour applied 
to produce useful articles, is entirely true ; but the instance 
given fails — and in four directions of failure at once — because 
Mr. Mill has not defined the real meaning of usefulness. 

* Also when the wrought silver vases of Spain were dashed to 
fragments by our custom-house officers, because bullion might be imported 
free of duty, but not brains, was the axe that broke them productive ? — 
the artist who wrought them unproductive ? Or again. If the woodman's 
axe is productive, is the executioner's ? as also, if the hemp of a cable be 
productive, does not the productiveness of hemp in a halter depend on its 
moral more than on its material application ? 



94 AD VALOREM. 

The definition which he has given — " capacity to satisfy a 
desire, or serve a purpose" (III. i. 2) — applies equally to 
the iron and silver ; while the true definition — which he has 
not given, but which nevertheless underlies the false verbal 
definition in his mind, and comes out once or twice by 
accident (as in the words " any support to life or strength " 
in I. i. 5) — applies to some articles of iron, but not to others, 
and to some articles of silver, but not to others. It applies to 
ploughs, but not to bayonets ; and to forks, but not to filigree.* 

The eliciting of the true definition will give us the reply 
to our first question, " What is value ? " respecting which, 
however, we must first hear the popular statements. 

"The word 'value,' when used without adjunct, always 
means, in political economy, value in exchange " (Mill, III. 
i. 3). So that, if two ships cannot exchange their rudders, 
their rudders are, in politico-economic language, of no value 
to either. 

But "the subject of political economy is wealth." — (Pre- 
liminary remarks, pnge 1.) 

And wealth " consists of all useful and agreeable objects 
which possess exchangeable value." — (Preliminary remarks, 
page 10.) 

It appears, then, according to Mr. Mill, that usefulness 

* Filigree : that is to say, generally, ornament dependent on complexity, 
not on art. 



AD VALOREM. 95 

anil agreeableness underlie the exchange value, and must 
be ascertained to exist in the thing, before we can esteem 
it an object of wealth. 

Now, the economical usefulness of a thing depends not 
merely on its own nature, but on the number of people 
who can and will use it. A horse is useless, and therefore 
unsaleable, if no one can ride, — a sword if no one can 
strike, and meat, if no one can eat. Thus every material 
utility depends on its relative human capacity. 

Similarly : The agreeableness of a thing depends not 
merely on its own likeableness, but on the number of people 
who can be got to like it. The relative agreeableness, and 
therefore saleableness, of "a pot of the smallest ale," and 
of "Adonis painted by a running brook," depends virtually 
on the opinion of Demos, in the shape of Christopher Sly. 
That is to say, the agreeableness of a thing depends on its 
relative human disposition.* Therefore, political economy, 

* These statements sound crude in their brevity; but will be found 
of the utmost importance when they are developed. Thus, in the above 
instance, economists have never perceived that disposition to buy is a 
wholly moral element in demand: that is to say, when you give a man 
half-a-crown, it depends on his disposition whether he is rich or poor 
with it — whether he will buy disease, ruin, and hatred, or buy health, 
advancement, and domestic love. And thus the agreeableness or exchange 
value of every offered commodity depends on production, not merely of 
the commodity, but of buyers of it ; therefore on the education of buyers 



96 AD VALOREM. 

being a science of wealth, must be a science inspecting 
human capacities and dispositions. But moral considera- 
tions have nothing to do with political economy (III. i. 2). 
Therefore, moral considerations have nothing to do with 
human capacities and dispositions. 

I do not wholly like the look of this conclusion from Mr. 
Mill's statements : — let us try Mr. Ricardo's. 

" Utility is not the measure of exchangeable value, though 
it is absolutely essential to it." — (Chap. I. sect. i. ) Essen- 
tial in what degree, Mr. Ricardo? There may be greater 
and less degrees of utility. Meat, for instance, may be so 
good as to be fit for any one to eat, or so bad as to be 
fit for no one to eat. What is the exact degree of good- 
ness which is "essential" to its exchangeable value, but 
not "the measure" of it ? How good must the meat be, 
in order to possess any exchangeable value ; and how bad 
must it be — (I wish this were a settled question in London 
markets) — in order to possess none? 

and on all the moral elements by which their disposition to buy this, or 
that, is formed. I will illustrate and expand into final consequences 
every one of these definitions in its place : at present they can only be 
given with extremest brevity; for in order to put the subject at once in 
a connected form before the reader, I have thrown into one, the open- 
ing definitions of four chapters; namely, of that on Value ("Ad Valorem"), 
on Price (" Thirty Pieces ") ; on Production (" Demeter ") ; and on Economy 
("The Law of the House"). 



AD VALOREM. 9*7 

There appears to be some hitch, I think, in the working 
even of Mr. Ricardo's principles ; but let him take his own 
example. " Suppose that in the early stages of society the 
bows and arrows of the hunter were of equal value with 
the implements of the fisherman. Under such circumstances 
the value of the deer, the produce of the hunter's day's 
labour, would be exactly' 1 '' (italics mine) "equal to the value 
of the fish, the product of the fisherman's day's labour. 
The comparative value of the fish and game would be 
entirely regulated by the quantity of labour realized in each." 
(Ricardo, chap. iii. On Value.) 

Indeed! Therefore, if the fisherman catches one sprat, 
and the huntsman one deer, one sprat will be equal in 
value to one deer ; but if the fisherman catches no sprat, 
and the huntsman two deer, no sprat will be equal in value 
to two deer ? 

Nay ; but — Mr. Ricardo's supporters may say — he means, 
on an average ; — if the average product of a day's work of 
fisher and hunter be one fish and one deer, the one fish 
will always be equal in value to the one deer. 

Might I inquire the species of fish. Whale ? or white- 
bait ? * 

* Perhaps it may be said, in farther support of Mr. Ricardo, that he 

meant, "when the utility is constant or given, the price varies as the 

quantity of labour." If he meant this, he should have said it; but, had 

5 



98 AD VALOREM. 

It would be waste of time to pursue these fallacies far- 
ther ; we will seek for a true definition. " 

Much store has been set for centuries upon the use of 

he meant it, he could have hardly missed the necessary result, that 
utility would be one measure of price (which he expressly denies it to 
be); and that, to prove saleableness, he had to prove a given quantity 
of utility, as well as a given quantity of labour; to wit, in his own 
instance, that the deer and fish would each feed the same number of 
men, for the same number of days, with equal pleasure to their palates. 
The fact is, he did not know what he meant himself. The general idea 
which he had derived from commercial experience, without being able 
to analyse it, was, that when the demand is constant, the price varies 
as the quantity of labour required for production ; or, — using the formula 
I gave in last paper — when y is constant, x y varies as x. But demand 
never is, nor can be, ultimately constant, if x varies distinctly; for, as 
price rises, consumers fall away; and as soon as there is a monopoly 
(and all scarcity is a form of monopoly; so that every commodity is 
affected occasionally by some colour of monopoly), y becomes the most 
influential condition of the price. Thus the price of a painting depends 
less on its merits than on the interest taken in it by the public; the 
price of singing less on the labour of the singer than the number of 
persons who desire to hear him; and the price of gold less on the 
scarcity which affects it in common with cerium or iridium, than on the 
sun-light colour and unalterable purity by which it attracts the admi- 
ration and answers the trusts of mankind. 

It must be kept in mind, however, that I use the word " demand " in 
a somewhat different sens? from economists usually. They mean by it 



AD VALOREM. 99 

our English classical education. It were to be wished that 
our well-educated merchants recalled to mind always this 
much of their Latin schooling, — that the nominative of 
valorem, ( a word already sufficiently familiar to them ) is 
valor ; a word which, therefore, ought to be familiar to 
them. Valor, from valere, to be well, or strong (uyiai'vw) ; 
— strong, in life (if a man), or valiant ; strong, for life (if 
a thing), or valuable. To be "valuable," therefore, is to 
" avail towards life." A truly valuable or availing thing is 
that which leads to life with its whole strength. In pro- 
portion as it does not lead to life, or as its strength is 
broken, it is less valuable ; in proportion as it leads away 
from life, it is unvaluable or malignant. 

The value of a thing, therefore, is independent of opinion, 
and of quantity. Think what you will of it, gain how 

" the quantity of a thing sold." I mean by it " the force of the buyer's 
capable intention to buy." In good English, a person's "demand" sig- 
nifies, not what he gets, but what he asks for. 

Economists also do not notice that objects are not valued by absolute 
bulk or weight, but by such bulk and weight as is necessary to bring 
them into use. They say, for instance, that water bears no price in the 
market. It is true that a cupful does not, but a lake does; just as a 
handful of dust does not, but an acre does. And were it possible to 
make even the possession of the cupful or handful permanent, («'. e. 
to find a place for them, ) the earth and sea would be bought up by 
handfuls and cupfuls. 



100 AD VALOREM. 

much you may of it, the value of the thing itself is neither 
greater nor less. For ever it avails, or avails not ; no esti- 
mate can raise, no disdain depress, the power which it holds 
from the Maker of things and of men. 

The real science of political economy, which has yet to be 
distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from 
witchcraft, and astronomy from astrology, is that which 
teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to 
life ; and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things 
that lead to destruction. And if, in a state of infancy, they 
suppose indifferent things, such as excrescences of shell-fish, 
and pieces of blue and red stone, to be valuable, and spend 
large measure of the labour which ought to be employed for 
the extension and ennobling of life, in diving or digging for 
them, and cutting them into various shapes, — or if, in the same 
state of infancy, they imagine precious and beneficent things, 
such as air, light, and cleanliness, to be valueless, — or if, 
finally, they imagine the conditions of their own existence, by 
which alone they can truly possess or use anything, such, for 
instance, as peace, trust, and love, to be prudently exchange- 
able, when the market offers, for gold, iron, or excrescences of 
shells — the great and only science of Political Economy teaches 
them, in all these cases, what is vanity, and what substance ; 
and how the service of Death, the Lord of Waste, and of eter- 
nal emptiness, differs from the service of Wisdom, the Lady of 



AD VALOREM. 101 

v 

Saving, and of eternal fulness ; she who has said, " I will cause 
those that love me to inherit Substance ; and I will Fill 
their treasures." 

The " Lady of Saving," in a profounder sense than that 
of the savings' bank, though that is a good one : Madonna 
della Salute, — Lady of Health — which, though commonly 
spoken of as if separate from wealth, is indeed a part of 
wealth. This word, " wealth," it will be remembered, is the 
next we have to define. 

" To be wealthy," says Mr. Mill, is " to have a large stock 
of useful articles." 

I accept this definition. Only let us perfectly understand 
it. My opponents often lament my not giving them enough 
logic : I fear I must at present use a little more than they will 
like; but this business of Political Economy is no light one, 
and we must allow no loose terms in it. 

We have, therefore, to ascertain in the above definition, first, 
what is the meaning of "having," or the nature of Possession. 
Then what is the meaning of " useful," or the nature of Utility. 

And first of possession. At the crossing of the transepts 
of Milan Cathedral has lain, for three hundred years, the 
embalmed body of St. Carlo Borromeo. It holds a golden 
crosier, and has a cross of emeralds on its breast. Admitting 
the crosier and emeralds to be useful articles, is the body to be 
considered as " having" them ? Do they, in the politico- 



102 AD VALOREM. 

economical sense of property, belong to it ? If not, and if we 
may, therefore, conclude generally that a dead body cannot 
possess property, what degree and period of animation in the 
body will render possession possible ? 

As thus : lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the 
passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred 
pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at 
the bottom. Now, as he was sinking — had he the gold ? or 
had the gold him ?* 

And if, instead of sinking him in the sea by its weight, the 
gold had struck him on the forehead, and thereby caused 
incurable disease — suppose palsy or insanity, — w r ould the 
gold in that case have been more a " possession" than in the 
first? Without pressing the inquiry up through instances of 
gradual increasing vital power over the gold (which I will, 
however, give, if they are asked for), I presume the reader 
will see that possession, or " having," is not an absolute, but 
a gradated, power ; and consists not only in the quantity or 
nature of the thing possessed, but also (and in a greater de- 
gree) in its suitableness to the person possessing it, and in his 
vital power to use it. 

And our definition of Wealth, expanded, becomes: "The 
possession of useful articles, which we can use" This is a 
very serious change. For wealth, instead of depending 
* Compare George Herbebt, The Church Porch, Stanza 28. 



AD VALOREM. 103 

merely on a " have," is thus seen to depend on a " can." 
Gladiator's death, on a "habet;" but soldier's victory, and 
state's salvation, on a " quo plurimuni posset." (Liv. VII. 
6.) And what we reasoned of only as accumulation of 
material, is seen to demand also accumulation of capacity. 

So much for our verb. Next for our adjective. What 
is the meaning of "useful?" 

The inquiry is closely connected with the last. For 
what is capable of use in the hands of some persons, is 
capable, in the hands of others, of the opposite of use, 
called commonly, "from-use or ab-use." And it depends 
on the person, much more than on the article, whether its 
usefulness or ab-usefulness will be the quality developed in 
it. Thus, wine, which the Greeks, in their Bacchus, made, 
rightly, the type of all passion, and which, when used, 
t'cheereth god and man" (that is to say, strengthens both 
the divine life, or reasoning power, and the earthly, or 
carnal power, of man); yet, when abused, becomes "Dio- 
nusos," hurtful especially to the divine part of man, or 
reason. And again, the body itself, being equally liable to 
use and to abuse, and, when rightly disciplined, serviceable 
to the State, both for war and labour ; — but when not dis- 
ciplined, or abused, valueless to the State, and capable 
only of continuing the private or single existence of the 
individual (and that but feebly) — the Greeks called such 



104 AD VALOREM. 

a body an " idiotic " or " private " body, from their 
word signifying a person employed in no way directly 
useful to the State ; whence, finally, our " idiot," mean- 
ing a person entirely occupied with his own concerns. 

Hence, it follows, that if a thing is to be useful, it 
must be not only of an availing nature, but in availing 
hands. Or, in accurate terms, usefulness is value in the 
hands of the valiant ; so that this science of wealth being, 
as we have just seen, when regarded as the science of 
Accumulation, accumulative of capacity as well as of mate- 
rial, — when regarded as the Science of Distribution, is 
distribution not absolute, but discriminate ; not of every 
thing to every man, but of the right thing to the right 
man. A difficult science, dependent on more than arithmetic. 

Wealth, therefore, is "the possession op the valuable 
by the valiant ; " and in considering it as a power exist- 
ing in a nation, the two elements, the value of the thing, 
and the valour of its possessor, must be estimated together. 
"Whence it appears that many of the persons commonly con- 
sidered wealthy, are in reality no more wealthy than the 
locks of their own strong boxes are ; they being inherently 
and eternally incapable of wealth ; and operating for the 
nation, in an economical point of view, either as pools of 
dead water, and eddies in a stream (which, so long as the 
stream flows, are useless, or serve only to drown people, 



AD VALOREM. 105 

but may become of importance in a state of stagnation, 
should the stream dry) ; or else, as dams in a river, of 
which the ultimate service depends not on the dam, but 
the miller; or else, as mere accidental stays and impedi- 
ments, acting, not as wealth, but (for we ought to have a 
correspondent term) as "illth," causing various devastation 
and trouble around them in all directions; or lastly, act 
not at all, but are merely animated conditions of delay, (no 
use being possible of anything they have until they are 
dead,) in which last condition they are nevertheless often 
useful as delays, and " impedimenta," if a nation is apt to 
move too fist. 

This being so, the difficulty of the true science of Political 
Economy lies not merely in the need of developing manly 
character to deal with material value, but hi the fact, that 
while the manly character and material value only form wealth 
by their conjunction, they have nevertheless a mutually 
destructive operation on each other. For the manly character 
is apt to ignore, or even cast away, the material value : 
— whence that of Pope : — 

" Sure, of qualities demanding praise 
More go to ruin fortunes, than to raise," 

And on the other hand, the material value is apt to undermine 

the manly character ; so that it must be our work, in the issue, 

5* 



106 AD VALOREM. 

to examine what evidence there is of the effect of wealth on 
the minds of its possessors ; also, what kind of person it is 
who usually sets himself to obtain wealth, and succeeds in 
doing so; and whether the world owes more gratitude to 
rich or to poor men, either for their moral influence upon 
it, or for chief goods, discoveries, and practical advance- 
ments. I may, however, anticipate future conclusion so far 
as to state that in a community regulated only by laws of 
demand and supply, and protected from open violence, 
the persons who become rich are, generally speaking, indus- 
trious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, 
unimaginative, insensitive, and ignorant. The persons who 
remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise,* the 
idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the 
imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, 
the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the 
open thief, and the entirely merciful, just, and godly person. 

Thus far then of wealth. Next, we have to ascertain the 
nature of Price ; that is to say, of exchange value, and its 
expression by currencies. 

Note first, of exchange, there can be no profit in it. It is 
only in labour there can be profit — that is to say a "making 

* " o Zevt ifjinv irhsTatJ" — Arist. Plut. 582. It would but weaken the 
grand words to lean on the preceding ones: — "on tov YlXoirov nape^u 

fit\riovas f avSpa; 1 xal t>iv yv&pr\v, k<x\ t>]v ibiav." 



AD VALOREM. 107 

in advance," or "making iu favour of" (from proficio). In 
exchange, there is only advantage, i.e. a bringing of vantage 
or power to the exchanging persons. Thus, one man, by 
sowing and reaping, turns one measure of corn into two 
measures. That is Profit. Another by digging and forging, 
turns one spade into two spades. That is Profit. But the 
man who has two measures of corn wants sometimes to dig ; 
and the man who has two spades wants sometimes to eat : — 
They exchange the gained grain for the gained tool ; and 
both are the better for the exchange ; but though there is 
much advantage in the transaction, there is no profit. 
Nothing is constructed or produced. Only that which had 
been before constructed is given to the person by whom it 
can be used. If labour is necessary to effect the exchange, 
that labour is in reality involved in the production, and, like 
all other labour, bears profit. Whatever number of men are 
concerned in the manufacture, or in the conveyance, have 
share in tlie profit ; but neither the manufacture nor the con- 
veyance are the exchange, and in the exchange itself there is 
no profit. 

There may, however, be acquisition, which is a very differ- 
ent thing. If, in the exchange, one man is able to give what 
cost him little labour for what has cost the other much, he 
" acquires" a certain quantity of the produce of the other's 
labour. And precisely what he acquires, the other loses. In 



108 AD VALOKEM. 

mercantile language, the person who thus acquires is com- 
monly said to have " made a profit ;" and I believe that 
many of our merchants are seriously under the impression 
that it is possible for everybody, somehow, to make a profit 
in tliis manner. Whereas, by the unfortunate constitution 
of the world we live in, the laws both of matter and motion 
have quite rigorously forbidden universal acquisition of this 
kind. Profit, or material gain, is attainable only by construc- 
tion or by discovery ; not by exchange. Whenever material 
gain follows exchange, for every plus there is a precisely 
equal minus. 

Unhappily for the progress of the science of Political 
Economy, the plus quantities, or, — if I may be allowed to 
coin an awkward plural — the pluses, make a very positive 
and venerable appearance in the world, so that every one is 
eager to learn the science which produces results so magnifi- 
cent ; whereas the minuses have, on the other hand, a 
tendency to retire into back streets, and other places of shade, 
— or even to get themselves wholly and finally put out of 
sight in graves: which renders the algebra of this science 
peculiar, and difficultly legible : a large number of its negative 
signs being written by the account-keeper in a kind of red 
ink, which starvation thins, and makes strangely pale, or even 
quite invisible ink, for the present. 

The Science of Exchange, or, as I hear it has been proposed 



AD VALOREM. 109 

to call it, of " Catallactics," considered as one of gain, is, 
therefore, simply nugatory ; but considered as one of acqui- 
sition, it is a very curious science, differing in its data and 
basis from every other science known. Thus: — If I can ex- 
change a needle with a savage for a diamond, my power of 
doing so depends either on the savage's ignorance of social 
arrangements in Europe, or on his want of power to take 
advantage of them, by selling the diamond to any one else for 
more needles. If, farther, I make the bargain as completely 
advantageous to myself as possible, by giving to the savage 
a needle with no eye in it (reaching, thus, a sufficiently satis- 
factory type of the perfect operation of catallactic science), 
the advantage to me in the entire transaction depends wholly 
upon the ignorance, powerlessness, or heedlessness of the 
person dealt with. Do away with these, and catallactic 
advantage becomes impossible. So far, therefore, as the 
science of exchange relates to the advantage of one of 
the exchanging persons only, it is founded on the igno- 
rance or incapacity of the opposite person. Where these 
vanish, it also vanishes. It is therefore a science founded 
on nescience, and an art founded on artlessness. But all 
other sciences and arts, except this, have for their object 
the doing away with their opposite nescience and artlessness. 
This science, alone of sciences, must, by all available 
means, promulgate and prolong its opposite nescience ; 



11 AD VALOREM. 

otherwise the science itself is impossible. It is, therefore, 
peculiarly and alone, the science of darkness ; probably 
a bastard science — not by any means a clivina scientia, but 
one begotten of another father, that father who, advising 
his children to turn stones into bread, is himself employed 
in turning bread into stones, and who, if you ask a fish 
of him (fish not being producible on his estate), can but 
give you a serpent. 

The general law, then, resjjecting just or economical 
exchange, is simply this : — There must be advantage on 
both sides (or if only advantage on one, at least no disad- 
vantage on. the other) to the persons exchanging; and just 
payment for his time, intelligence, and labour, to any inter- 
mediate person effecting the transaction (commonly called 
a merchant): and whatever advantage there is on either 
side, and whatever pay is given to the intermediate person, 
should be thoroughly known to all concerned. All attempt 
at concealment implies some practice of the opposite, or 
undivine science, founded on nescience. Whence another 
saying of the Jew merchant's — " As a nail between the 
stone joints, so doth sin stick fast between buying and 
selling." Which peculiar riveting of stone and timber, in 
men's dealings with each other, is again set forth in the 
house which was to be destroyed — timber and stones together 
— when Zechariah's roll (more probably "curved sword") 



AD VALOREM. Ill 

flew over it : " the curse that goeth forth over all the earth 
upon every one that stealeth and holcleth himself guiltless," 
instantly followed hy the vision of the Great Measure ; — the 
measure "of the injustice of them in all the earth" (aurvj \\ 
aStxia. aurojv s'v tfatf?) rfi yrj), with the weight of lead for its lid, 
and the woman, the spirit of wickedness, within it; — that 
is to say, Wickedness hidden hy Dulness, and formalized, 
outwardly, into ponderously established cruelty. " It shall 
be set upon its own base in the land of Babel." * 

I have hitherto carefully restricted myself, in speaking 
of exchange, to the use of the term " advantage ; " but that 
term includes two ideas ; the advantage, namely, of getting 
what we need, and that of getting what we wish for. 
Three-fourths of the demands existing in the world are 
romantic ; founded on visions, idealisms, hopes, and affec- 
tions ; and the regulation of the purse is, in its essence, 
regulation of the imagination and the heart. Hence, the 
right discussion of the nature of price is a very high 
metaphysical and physical problem ; sometimes to be solved 
only in a passionate manner, as by David in bis counting 
the price of the water of the well by the gate of Bethlehem ; 
but its first conditions are the following : — The price of 
anything is the quantity of labour given by the person 
desiring it, in order to obtain possession of it. This price 
* Zech. v. 11. See note on the passage, at page 120. 



112 AD VALOREM. 

depends on four variable quantities. A. The quantity of 
wish the purchaser has for the thing ; opposed to a, the 
quantity of wish the seller has to keep it. B. The quan- 
tity of labour the purchaser can afford, to obtain the thing ; 
opposed to /3, the quantity of labour the seller can afford, 
to keep it. These quantities are operative only in excess ; 
i. e. the quantity of wish (A) means the quantity of wish 
for this thing, above wish for other things; and the quan- 
tity of work (j5) means the quantity which can be spared 
to get this thing from the quantity needed to get other 
things. 

Phenomena of price, therefore, are intensely complex, 
curious, and interesting — too complex, however, to be 
examined yet ; every one of them, when traced far enough, 
showing itself at last as a part of the bargain of the Poor 
of the Flock (or " flock of slaughter "), " If ye think good 
give me my price, and if not, forbear" — Zech. xi. 12; but 
as the price of everything is to be calculated finally 
in labour, it is necessary to define the nature of that stand- 
ard. 

Labour is the contest of the life of man with an opposite ; 
— the term " life " including his intellect, soul, and physical 
power, contending with question, difficulty, trial, or material 
force. 

Labour is of a higher or lower order, as it includes 



AD VALOREM. 113 

more or fewer of the elements of life : and labour of good 
quality, in any kind, includes always as much intellect and 
feeling as will fully and harmoniously regulate the physical 
force. 

In speaking of the value and price of labour, it is neces- 
sary always to understand labour of a given rank and 
quality, as we should speak of gold or silver of a given 
standard. Bad (that is, heartless, inexperienced, or sense- 
less) labour cannot be valued ; it is like gold of uncertain 
alloy, or flawed iron.* 

The quality and kind of labour being given, its value, 
like that of all other valuable things, is invariable. But the 
quantity of it which must be given for other things is 
variable ; and in estimating this variation, the price of other 

* Labour which is entirely good of its kind, that is to say, effective, 
or efficient, the Greeks called "weighable," or a^vs, translated usually 
"worthy," and because thus substantial and true, they caUed its price 
ti/u'i, tho "honourable estimate" of it (honorarium): this word being 
founded on their conception of true labour as a divine thing, to be hon- 
oured with the kind of honour given to the gods ; whereas the price of 
false labour, or of that which led away from life, was to be, not honour, 
but vengeance; for which they reserved another word, attributing the 
exaction of such price to a peculiar goddess, called Tisiphone, the "requit- 
er (or quittance-taker) of death ; " a person versed in the highest 
branches of arithmetic, and punctual in her habits ; with whom accounts 
current have been opened also in modern days. 



114 AD VALOREM. 

things must always be counted by the quantity of labour ; 
not the price of labour by the quantity of other things. 

Thus, if we want to plant an apple sapling in rocky 
ground, it may take two hours' work ; in soft ground, per- 
haps only half an hour. Grant the soil equally good for 
the tree in each case. Then the value of the sapling plant- 
ed by two hours' work is nowise greater than that of the 
sapling planted in half an hour. One will bear no more 
fruit than the other. Also, one half-hour of work is as 
valuable as another half-hour ; nevertheless the one sapling 
has cost four such pieces of work, the other only one. 
Now the proper statement of this fact is, not that the 
labour on the hard ground is cheaper than on the soft; 
but that the tree is dearer. The exchange value may, or 
may not, afterwards depend on this fact. If other people 
have plenty of soft ground to plant in, they will take no 
cognizance of our two hours' labour, in the price they will 
offer for the plant on the rock. And if, through want of 
sufficient botanical science, we have planted an upas-tree 
instead of an apple, the exchange-value will be a negative 
quantity ; still less proportionate to the labour expended. 

What is commonly called cheapness of labour, signifies, 
therefore, in reality, that many obstacles have to be over- 
come by it ; so that much labour is required to produce a 
small result. But this should never be spoken of as cheap- 



AD VALOEEM. 115 

ness of labour, but as clearness of the object wrought for. 
It would be just as rational to say that walking was 
cheap, because we had ten miles to walk home to our din- 
ner, as that labour was cheap, because we had to work 
ten hours to earn it. 

The last word which we have to define is " Pro- 
duction." 

I have hitherto spoken of all labour as profitable ; 
because it is impossible to consider under one head the 
quality or value of labour, and its aim. But labour of the 
best quality may be various in aim. It may be either con- 
structive ("gathering," from con and struo), as agriculture ; 
nugatory, as jewel-cutting; or destructive ("scattering," 
from de and struo), as war. It is not, however, always 
easy to prove labour, apparently nugatory, to be actually 
so ; * generally, the formula holds good : " he that gather- 

* The most accurately nugatory labour is, perhaps, that of which not 
enough is given to answer a purpose effectually, and which, therefore, 
has all to be done over again. Also, labour which fails of effect through 
non-co-operation. The cure of a little village near Bellinzona, to whom I 
had expressed wonder that the peasants allowed the Ticino to flood their 
fields, told me that they would not join to build an effectual embank- 
ment high up the valley, because everybody said "that would help his 
neighbours as much as himself." So every proprietor built a bit of low 
embankment about his own field; and the Ticino, as soon as it had a 
mind, swept away and swallowed all up together. 



116 AD VALOEEM. 

eth not, scattereth ; " thus, the jeweller's art is probably 
very harmful in its miuistering to a clumsy and inelegant 
pride. So that, finally, I believe nearly all labour may be 
shortly divided into positive and negative labour: positive, 
that which produces life ; negative, that which produces 
death ; the most directly negative labour being murder, and 
the most directly positive, the bearing and rearing of chil- 
dren ; so that in the precise degree which murder is hateful, 
on the negative side of idleness, in that exact degree child- 
rearing is admirable, on the positive side of idleness. For 
which reason, and because of the honour that there is in 
rearing * children, while the wife is said to be as the vine 
(for cheeriDg), the children are as the olive-branch, for 
praise; nor for praise only, but for peace (because large 
families can only be reared in times of peace) : though 
since, in their spreading and voyaging in various directions, 
they distribute strength, they are, to the home strength, 

* Observe, I say, "rearing," not "begetting." The praise is in the 
seventh season, not in anoprjTd;, nor in (pvraXta, but in dmjpa. It is strange 
that men always praise enthusiastically any person who, by a momentary 
exertion, saves a life ; but praise very hesitatingly a person who, by exer- 
tion and self-denial prolonged through years, creates one. "We give the 
crown "ob civem servatum; " — why not "ob civem natum? " Born, I 
mean, to the full in soul as well as body. England has oak enough, I 
think, for both chaplets. 



AD VALOREM. 117 

as arrows in the hand of a giant — striking here and there, 
far away. 

Labour being thus various in its result, the prosperity 
of any nation is in exact proportion to the quantity of 
labour which it spends in obtaining and employing means 
of life. Observe, — I say, obtaining and employing; that 
is to say, not merely wisely producing, but wisely dis- 
tributing and consuming. Economists usually speak as if 
there were no good in consumption absolute.* So far from 
this being so, consumption absolute is the end, crown, and 
perfection of production ; and wise consumption is a far more 
difficult art than wise production. Twenty people can gain 
money for one who can use it ; and the vital question, for 
individual and for nation, is, never "how much do they 
make ?" but " to what purpose do they spend ?" 

The reader may, perhaps, have been surprised at the slight 
reference I have hitherto made "to capital," and its func- 
tions. It is here the place to define them. 

Capital signifies "head, or source, or root material" — 
it is material by which some derivative or secondary 
good, is produced. It is only capital proper (caput vivum, 
not caput mortnum) when it is thus producing something 

* When Mr. Mill speaks of productive consumption, he only means 
consumption which results in increase of capital, or material wealth. See 
I. hi. 4, and I. iii. 5. 



118 AD VALOREM." 

different from itself. It is a root, which does not enter 
into vital function till it produces something else than a 
root; namely, fruit. That fruit will in time again produce 
roots; and so all living capital issues in reproduction of 
capital ; but capital* which produces nothing but capital 
is only root producing root ; bulb issuing in bulb, never 
in tulip ; seed issuing in seed, never in bread. The Political 
Economy of Europe has hitherto devoted itself wholly to 
the multiplication, or (less even) the aggregation, of bulbs. 
It never saw nor conceived such a thing as a tulip. Nay, 
boiled bulbs they might have been — glass bulbs — Prince 
Rupert's drops, consummated in powder (well, if it were 
glass-powder and not gunpowder), for any end or meaning 
the economists had in denning the laws of aggregation. We 
will try and get a clearer notion of them. 

The best and simplest general type of capital is a well-made 
ploughshare. Now, it* that ploughshare did nothing but 
beget other ploughshares, in a polypous manner, — however 
the great cluster of polypous plough might glitter in the 
sun, it would have lost its function of capital. It becomes 
true capital only by another kind of splendour, — when it is 
seen " splendescere sulco," to grow bright in the furrow ; 
rather with diminution of its substance, than addition, by 
the noble friction. And the true home question, to every 
capitalist and to every nation, is not, " how many ploughs 



AD VALOREM. 119 

have you ?" — but, " where are your furrows ?" not — " how 
quickly will this capital reproduce itself ?" — but, " what will it 
do during reproduction ?" What substance will it furnish, 
good for life ? what work construct, protective of life ? if none, 
its own reproduction is useless — if worse than none, — (for capi- 
tal may destroy life as well as support it), its own reproduc- 
tion is worse than useless ; it is merely an advance from 
Tisiphone, on mortgage — not a profit by any means. 

Not a profit, as the ancients truly saw, and showed in the 
type of Ixion ; for capital is the head, or fountain head, 
of wealth — the " well-head " of wealth, as the clouds are 
the well-heads of rain : but when clouds are without water, 
and only beget clouds, they issue in wrath at last, instead 
of rain, and in lightning instead of harvest; whence Ixion 
is said first to have invited his guests to a banquet, and 
then made them fall into a pit filled with fire ; which is 
the type of the temptation of riches issuing in impi'isoned 
torment, — torment in a pit, (as also Demas' silver mine,) 
after which, to show the rage of riches passing from lust 
of pleasure to lust of power, yet power not truly understood, 
Ixion is said to have desired Juno, and instead, embracing a 
cloud (or phantasm), to have begotten the Centaurs ; the 
power of mere wealth being, in itself, as the embrace of 
a shadow, — comfortless, (so also " Ephraim feedeth on wind 
and followeth after the east wind ; or " that which is not" — 



120 AD VALOREM. 

Prov. xxiii. 5 ; and again Dante's Geryon, the type of 
avaricious fraud, as he flies, gathers the air up with retractile 
claws, — " l'aer a se raccolse,"*) but in its offspring, a mingling 
of the brutal with the human nature : human in sagacity — 
using both intellect and arrow ; but brutal in its body and 
hoof, for consuming and trampling clown. For which sin 
Ixion is at last bound upon a wheel — fiery and toothed, and 
rolling perpetually in the air ; — the type of human labour 
when selfish and fruitless (kept far into the middle ages in 
their wheel of fortune) ; the wheel which has in it no breath 
or spirit, but is whirled by chance only ; whereas of all true 
work the Ezekiel vision is true, that the spirit of the living 

* So also in the vision of the women bearing the ephah, before 
quoted, "the wind was in their wings," not wings "of a stork," as 
in our version; but "milvi" of a kite, in the Vulgate, or perhaps more 
accurately still in the Septuagint, "hoopoe," a bird connected typically with 
the power of riches by many traditions, of which that of its petition for a 
crest of gold is perhaps the most interesting. The " Birds" of Aristophanes, 
in which its part is principal, are full of them ; note especially the " fortifi- 
cation of the air with baked bricks, like Babylon," 1. 550; and, again, 
compare the Plutus of Dante, who (to show the influence of riches in 
destroying the reason) is the only one of the powers of the Inferno who 
cannot speak intelligibly; and also the cowardliest; he is not merely 
quelled or restrained, but literally "collapses" at a word; the sudden and 
helpless operation of mercantile panic being all told in the brief metaphor, 
" as the sails, swollen with the wind, fall, when the mast breaks." 



AD VALOREM. 121 

creature is in the wheels, and where the angels go, the wheels 
go by them ; but move no otherwise. 

This being the real nature of capital, it follows that there 
are two kinds of true production, always going on in an active 
State ; one of seed, and one of food or production for the 
Ground, and for the Month ; both of which are by covetons 
persons thought to be production only for the granary ; 
whereas the function of the granary is but intermediate and 
conservative, fulfilled in distribution ; else it ends in nothing 
but mildew, and nourishment of rats and worms. And 
since production for the Ground is only useful with future hope 
of harvest, all essential production is for the Mouth ; and is 
finally measured by the mouth ; hence, as I said above, 
consumption is the crown of production ; and the wealth of 
a nation is only to be estimated by what it consumes. 

The want of any clear sight of this fact is the capital 

error, issuing in rich interest and revenue of error, among 

the political economists. Their minds are continually set on 

money-gain, not on mouth gain ; and they fall into every sort 

of net and snare, dazzled by the coin-glitter as birds by the 

fowler's glass ; or rather (for there is not much else like birds 

in them) they are like children trying to jump on the 

heads of their own shadows; the money-gain being only the 

shadow of the true gain, which is humanity. 

The final object of political economy, therefore, is to get 

6 



122 AD VALOREM. 

good method of consumption, and great quantity of consump- 
tion : in other words, to use everything, and to use it nobly ; 
whether it be substance, service, or service perfecting 
substance. The most curious error in Mr. Mill's entire work 
(provided for him originally by Ricardo), is his endeavour 
to distinguish between direct and indirect service, and 
consequent assertion that a demand for commodities is not 
demand for labour (I. v. 9, et seq.) He distinguishes be- 
tween labourers employed to lay out pleasure grounds, and 
to manufacture velvet; declaring that it makes material dif- 
ference to the labouring classes in which of these two ways a 
capitalist spends his money; because the employment of the 
gardeners is a demand for labour, but the purchase of velvet 
is not.* Error colossal as well as strange. It will, indeed, 

* The value of raw material, which has, indeed, to be deducted from the 
price of the labour, is not contemplated in the passages referred to, Mr. Mill 
having fallen into the mistake solely by pursuing the collateral results of 
the payment of wages to middlemen. He says — " The consumer does not, 
with his own funds, pay the weaver for his day's work." Pardon me; the 
consumer of the velvet pays the weaver with his own funds as much as he 
pajrs the gardener. He pays, probably, an intermediate ship-owner, velvet 
merchant, and shopman; pays carriage money, shop rent, damage money, 
time money, and care money; all these are above and beside the velvet 
price (just as the wages of a head gardener would be above the grass 
price) ; but the velvet is as much produced by the consumer's capital, 
though ho does not pay for it till six months after production, as the grass 



AD VALOREM. 123 

make a difference to the labourer whether he hid him swing his 
scythe in the spring winds, or drive the loom in pestilential 
air; hut, so far as his pocket is concerned, it makes to him 
absolutely no difference whether we order him to make 
green velvet, with seed and a scythe, or red velvet, with silk 
and scissors. Neither does it anywise concern him whether, 
when the velvet is made, we consume it by walking on it, or 
wearing it, so long as our consumption of it is wholly selfish. 
But if our consumption is to be in anywise unselfish, not only 
our mode of consuming the articles we require interests him, 
but also the kind of article we require with a view to 
consumption. As thus (returning for a moment to Mr. Mill's 
great hardware theory*) : it matters, so far as the labourer's 
immediate profit is concerned, not an iron filing whether I 
employ him in growing a peach, or forging a bombshell ; but 
my probable mode of consumption of those articles matters 
seriously. Admit that it is to be in both cases " unselfish," 

is produced by his capital, though he does not pay the man who mowed 
and rolled it on Monday, till Saturday afternoon. I do not know if Mr. 
Mill's conclusion, — " the capital cannot be dispensed with, the purchasers 
can " (p. 98), has yet been reduced to practice in the City on any large 
scale. 

* "Which, observe, is the precise opposite of the one under examination. 
The hardware theory required us to discharge our gardeners and engage 
manufacturers; the velvet theory requires us to discharge our manufac 
turers and engage gardeners. 



124 AD VALOREM. 

and the difference, to him, is final, whether when his child is 
ill, I walk it into his cottage and give it the peach, or drop 
the shell down his chimney, and blow his roof off. 

The worst of it, for the peasant, is, that the capitalist's 
consumption of the peach is apt to be selfish, and of the 
shell, distributive ; * but, in all cases, this is the broad and 
general fact, that on cfue catallactic commercial principles, 

* It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that 
it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports unjust wars. Just wars 
do not need so much money to support them ; for most of the men who 
wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men's bodies and 
souls have both to be bought ; and the best tools of war for them besides ; 
which makes such war costly to the maximum; not to speak of the 
cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, between nations which have not 
grace nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace 
of mind with : as, at present, Prance and England, purchasing of each 
other ten millions sterling worth of consternation annually, (a remarkably 
light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, — sown, reaped, and grana- 
ried by the " science " of the modern political economist, teaching covet- 
ousness instead of truth.) And all unjust war being supportable, if not 
by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are 
repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will 
in the matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root of the war; 
but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering it 
incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in 
due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each person. 



AD VALOREM. 125 

somebody's roof must go off in fulfilment of the bomb's 
destiny. You may grow for your neighbour, at your liking, 
grapes or grapeshot ; he will also, catallactically, grow 
grapes or grapeshot for you, and you will each reap what 
you have sown. 

It is, therefore, the manner and issue of consumption 
which are the real tests of production. Production does 
not consist in things laboriously made, but in things service- 
ably consumable ; and the question for the nation is not 
how much labour it employs, but how much life it pro- 
duces. For as consumption is the end and aim of produc- 
tion, so life is the end and aim of consumption. 

I left this question to the reader's thought two months 
ago, choosing rather that he should work it out for him- 
self than have it sharply stated to him. But now, the 
ground being sufficiently broken (and the details into which 
the several questions, here opened, must lead us, being too 
complex for discussion in the pages of a periodical, so that 
I must pursue them elsewhere), I desire, in closing the 
series of introductory papers, to leave this one great fact 
clearly stated. There is no Wealth but Life. Life, 
including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. 
That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest 
number of noble and happy human beings ; that man is 
richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life 



126 AD VALOREM. 

to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both 
personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of 
others. 

A strange political economy; the only one, nevertheless, 
that ever was or can be : all political economy founded on 
self-interest* being but the fulfilment of that which once 
brought schism into the Policy of angels, and ruin into the 
Economy of Heaven. 

" The greatest number of human beings noble and 
happy." But is the nobleness consistent with the number? 
Yes, not only consistent with it, but essential to it. The 
maximum of life can only be reached by the maximum of 
virtue. In this respect the law of human population differs 
wholly from that of animal life. The multiplication of 
animals is checked only by want of food, and by the hos- 
tility of races ; the population of the gnat is restrained by 
the hunger of the swallow, and that of the swallow by the 
scarcity of gnats. Man, considered as an animal, is indeed 
limited by the same laws; hunger, or plague, or war, are 
the necessary and only restraints upon his increase, — effect- 
ual restraints hitherto, — his principal study having been how 
most swiftly to destroy himself, or ravage his dwelling- 
places, and his highest skill directed to give range to the 

* "In all reasoning about prices, the proviso must be understood, 
' supposing all parties to take care of their own interest.' " — Mill, III. i. 5. 



AD VALOREM. 127 

famine, seed to the plague, and sway to the sword. But, 
considered as other than an animal, his increase is not 
limited by these laws. It is limited only by the limits of 
his courage and his love. Both of these have their bounds ; 
and ought to have: his race has its bounds also; but these 
have not yet been reached, nor will be reached for 
ages. 

In all the ranges of human thought I know none so 
melancholy as the speculations of political economists on the 
population question. It is proposed to better the condition 
of the labourer by giving him higher wages. " Nay," says 
the economist, " if you raise his wages, he will either peo- 
ple down to the same point of misery at Avhich you found 
him, or drink your wages away." He will. I know it. 
Who gave him this will? Suppose it were your own son 
of whom you spoke, declaring to me that you dared not 
take him into your firm, nor even give him his just labour- 
er's wages, because if you did, he would die of drunkenness, 
•and leave half a score of children to the parish. " Who 
gave your son these dispositions ? " — I should inquire. Has 
he them by inheritance or by education ? By one or other 
they must come ; and as in him, so also in the poor. 
Either these poor are of a race essentially different from 
ours, and unredeemable (which, however often implied, I 
have heard none yet openly say), or else by such care as 



128 AD VALOREM. 

we have ourselves received, we may make them continent 
and sober as ourselves — wise and dispassionate as we are 
— models arduous of imitation. "But," it is answered, 
" they cannot receive education." Why not ? That is pre- 
cisely the point at issue. Charitable persons suppose the 
worst fault of the rich is to refuse the people meat ; and 
the people cry for their meat, kept back by fraud, to the 
Lord of Multitudes.* Alas ! it is not meat of which the 
refusal is crudest, or to which the claim is validest. The 

* James v. 4. Observe, in these statements I am not taking up, nor 
countenancing one whit, the common socialist idea of division of property; 
division of property is its destruction; and with it the destruction of all 
hope, all industry, and all justice : it is simply chaos — a chaos towards 
which the believers in modern political economy are fast tending, and 
from which I am striving to save them. The rich man does not keep 
back meat from the poor by retaining his riches; but by basely using 
them. Riches are a form of strength ; and a strong man does not injure 
others by keeping his strength, but by using it injuriously. The socialist, 
seeing a strong man oppress a weak one, cries out — "Break the strong 
man's arms;" but I say, "Teach him to use them to better purpose." 
The fortitude and intelligence which acquire riches are intended, by the 
Giver of both, not to scatter, nor to give away, but to employ those 
riches in the service of mankind; in other words, in the redemption of 
the erring and aid of the weak — that is to say, there is first to be the 
work to gain money; then the Sabbath of use for it — the Sabbath, whose 
law is, not to lose life, but to save. It is continually the fault or the 



AD VALOREM. 12 9 

life is more than the meat. The rich not only refuse food 

to the poor; they refuse wisdom; they refuse virtue; they 

refuse salvation. Ye sheep without shepherd, it is not the 

pasture that has been shut from you, but the presence. 

Meat ! perhaps your right to that may be pleadable ; but 

other rights have to be pleaded first. Claim your crumbs 

from the table, if you will ; but claim them as children, 

not as dogs; claim your right to be fed, but claim more 

loudly your right to be holy, perfect, and pm*e. 

Strange words to be used of working people : " What ! 

holy ; without any long robes nor anointing oils ; these 

rough-jacketed, rough-worded persons; set to nameless and 

dishonoured service? Perfect! — these, with dim eyes and 

cramped limbs, and slowly wakening minds ? Pure — these, 

with sensual desire and grovelling thought ; foul of body, 

and coarse of soul ? " It may be so ; nevertheless, such as 

they are, they are the holiest, perfectest, purest persons 

folly of the poor that they are poor, as it is usually a child's fault if it 

falls into a pond, and a cripple's weakness that slips at a crossing; 

nevertheless, most passers-by would pull the child out, or help up the 

cripple. Put it at the worst, that all the poor of the world are but 

disobedient children, or careless cripples, and that all rich people are 

wise and strong, and you will see at once that neither is the socialist 

right in desiring to make everybody poor, powerless, and foolish as he 

is himself, nor the rich man right in leaving the children in the 

mire. 

6* 



130 AD VALOREM. 

the earth can at present show. They may be what you 
have said ; but if so, they yet are holier than we, who 
have left them thus. 

But what can be done for them ? Who can clothe — 
who teach — who restrain their multitudes ? What end can 
there be for them at last, but to consume one another ? 

I hope for another end, though not, indeed, from any 
of the three remedies for over-population commonly suggested 
by economists. 

These three are, in brief — Colonization ; Bringing in of 
waste lands ; or Discouragement of Marriage. 

The first and second of these expedients merely evade or 
delay the question. It will, indeed, be long before the 
world has been all colonized, and its deserts all brought 
under cultivation. But the radical question is not how 
much habitable land is in the world, but how many human 
beings ought to be maintained on a given space of habitable 
land. 

Observe, I say, ought to be, not how many can be. 
Ricardo, with his usual inaccuracy, defines what he calls 
the " natural rate of wages " as " that which will maintain 
the labourer." Maintain him! yes; but how ? — the question 
was instantly thus asked of me by a working girl, to whom 
I read the passage. I will amplify her question for her. 
" Maintain him, how ? " As first, to what length of life ? 



AD VALOREM. 131 

Out of a given number of fed persons how many are to be 
old — how many young ; that is to say, will you arrange 
their maintenance so as to kill them early — say at thirty 
or thirty-five on the average, including deaths of weakly 
or ill-fed children ? — or so as to enable them to live out a 
natural life? You will feed a greater number, in the first 
case,* by rapidity of succession ; probably a happier num- 
ber in the second : which does Mr. Ricardo mean to be 
their natural state, and to which state belongs the natural 
rate of wages ? 

Again : A piece of land which will only support ten 
idle, ignorant, and improvident persons, will support thirty 
or forty intelligent and industrious ones. Which of these 
is their natural state, and to which of them belongs the 
natural rate of wages ? 

Again : If a piece of land support forty persons in indus- 
trious ignorance ; and if, tired of this ignorance, they set 
apart ten of their number to study the properties of cones, 
and the sizes of stars ; the labour of these ten, being with- 
drawn from the ground, must either tend to the increase 
of food in some transitional manner, or the persons set 
apart for siderial and conic purposes must starve, or some 
one else starve instead of them. What is, therefore, the 

* The quantity of life is the same in both cases ; but it is differently 
allotted. 



132 AD VALOREM. 

rate natural of wages of the scientific persons, and how 
does this rate relate to, or measure, their reverted or 
transitional productiveness ? 

Again : If the ground maintains, at first, forty labourers 
in a peaceable and pious state of mind, but they become in 
a few years so quarrelsome and impious that they have to 
set apart five, to meditate upon and settle their disputes ; — 
ten, armed to the teeth with costly instruments, to enforce 
the decisions ; and five to remind everybody in an eloquent 
manner of the existence of a God ; — what will be the result 
upon the general power of production, and what is the 
" natural rate of wages" of the meditative, muscular, and 
oracular labourers ? 

Leaving these questions to be discussed, or waived, at 
their pleasure, by Mr. Ricardo's followers, I proceed to state 
the main facts bearing on that probable future of the laboiir- 
ing classes which has been partially glanced at by Mr. Mill. 
That chapter and the preceding one differ from the common 
writing of political economists in admitting some value in 
the aspect of nature, and expressing regret at the proba- 
bility of the destruction of natural scenery. But we may 
spare our anxieties on this head. Men can neither drink 
steam, nor eat stone. The maximum of population on a 
given space of land implies also the relative maximum of 
edible vegetable, whether for men or cattle ; it implies a 



AD VALOREM. 133 

maximum of pure air; and of pure water. Therefore: a 
maximum of wood, to transmute the air, and of sloping- 
ground, protected by herbage from the extreme heat of the 
sun, to feed the streams. All England may, if it so chooses, 
become one manufacturing town ; and Englishmen, sacri- 
ficing themselves to the good of general humanity, may live 
diminished lives in the midst of noise, of dai-kness, and of 
deadly exhalation. But the world cannot become a factory, 
nor a mine. No amount of ingenuity will ever make iron 
digestible by the million, nor substitute hydrogen for wine. 
Neither the avarice nor the rage of men will ever feed them, 
and however the apple of Sodom and the grape of Gomorrah 
may spread their table for a time with dainties of ashes, and 
nectar of asps, — so long as men live by bread, the far away 
valleys must laugh as they are covered with the gold of God, 
and the shouts of His happy multitudes ring round the wine- 
press and the well. 

Nor need our more sentimental economists fear the too 
wide spread of the formalities of a mechanical agriculture. 
The presence of a wise population implies the search for 
felicity as well as for food ; nor can any population reach its 
maximum but through that wisdom which "rejoices" in the 
habitable parts of the earth. The desert has its appointed 
place and Avork ; the eternal engine, whose beam is the earth's 
axle, whose beat is its year, and whose breath is its ocean, 



134 AD VALOREM. 

will still divide imperiously to their desert kingdoms, bound 
with uufurrowable rock, and swept by unarrested sand, their 
powers of frost and fire : but the zones and lands between, 
habitable, will be loveliest in habitation. The desire of the 
heart is also the light of the eyes. No scene is continually 
and untiringly loved, but one rich by joyful human labour; 
smooth in field, fair in garden ; full in orchard ; trim, sweet, 
and frequent in homestead ; ringing with voices of vivid 
existence. No air is sweet that is silent ; it is only sweet 
when full of low currents of under sound — triplets of birds, 
and murmur and chirp of insects, and deep-toned words of 
men, and wayward trebles of childhood. As the art of life 
is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are 
also necessary: — the wild flower by the wayside, as well 
as the tended corn ; and the wild birds and creatures of the 
forest, as well as the tended cattle ; because man doth not 
live by bread only, but also by the desert manna; by every 
wondrous word and unknowable work of God. Happy, in 
that he knew them not, nor did his fathers know ; and that 
round about him reaches yet into the infinite, the amazement 
of his existence. 

Note, finally, that all effectual advancement towards this 
true felicity of the human race must be by individual, not 
public effort. Certain general measures may aid, certain 
revised laws guide, such advancement ; but the measure and 



AD VALOREM. 135 

law which have first to be determined are those of each 
man's home. We continually hear it recommended by saga- 
cious people to complaining neighbours (usually less well 
placed in the world than themselves), that they should " re- 
main content in the station in which Providence has placed 
them." There are perhaps some circumstances of life in 
which Providence has- no intention that people should be 
content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole a good 
one ; but it is peculiarly for home use. That your neighbour 
should, or should not, remain content with his position, is 
not your business ; but it is very much your business to 
remain content with your own. What is chiefly needed in 
England at the present day is to show the quantity of plea- 
sure that may be obtained by a consistent, well-administered 
competence, modest, confessed, and laborious. We need 
examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether 
they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they 
will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek — not greater 
wealth, but simpler pleasure ; not higher fortune, but deeper 
felicity ; making the first of possessions, self-possession ; and 
honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits 
of peace. 

Of which lowly peace it is written that "justice and peace 
have kissed each other;" and that the fruit of justice is 
"sown in peace of them that make peace;" not "peace- 



136 AD VALOREM. 

makers" in the common understanding — reconcilers of quar- 
rels ; (though that function also follows on the greater one ;) 
but peace-Creators; Givers of Calm. Which you cannot give, 
unless you first gain ; nor is this gain one which will follow 
assuredly on any course of business, commonly so called. 
No form of gain is less probable, business being (as is shown 
in the language of all nations — *u\e7v from tfsXw, irpatfij from 
tfepiw, venire, vendre, and venal, from venio, &c.) essentially 
restless — and probably contentious; — having a raven-like 
mind to the motion to and fro, as to the carrion food; 
whereas the olive-feeding and bearing birds look for rest for 
their feet : thus it is said of Wisdom that she " hath builded 
her house, and hewn out her seven pillars ;" and even when, 
though apt to wait long at the doorposts, she has to leave 
her house and go abroad, her paths are peace also. 

For us, at all events, her work must begin at the entry 
of the doors: all true economy is "Law of the house." 
Strive to make that law strict, simple, generous: waste 
nothing, and grudge nothing. Care in nowise to make 
more of money, but care to make much of it ; remembering 
always the great, palpable, inevitable fact — the rule and 
root of all economy — that what one person has, another 
cannot have ; and that every atom of substance, of what- 
ever kind, used or consumed, is so much human life spent ; 
which, if it issue in the saving present life, or gaining 



AD VAXOREM. 137 

more, is well spent, but if not, is either so much life pre- 
vented, or so much slain. In all buying, consider, first, 
what condition of existence you cause in the producers 
of what you buy ; secondly, whether the sum you have 
paid is just to the producer, and in due proportion, 
lodged in his hands;* thirdly, to how much clear use, 
for food, knowledge, or joy, this that you have bought 
can be put ; and fourthly, to whom and in what way 
it can be most speedily and serviceably distributed : in 
all dealings whatsoever insisting on entire openness and 
stern fulfilment; and in all doings, on perfection and 
loveliness of accomplishment; especially on fineness and 
purity of all marketable commodity: watching at the 
same time for all ways of gaining, or teaching, powers 
of simple pleasure ; and of showing " otfov sv aafadeXu yiy" 1 
o'vsiap" — the sum of enjoyment depending not on the quan- 
tity of things tasted, but on the vivacity and patience of 
taste. 

* The proper offices of middle-men, namely, overseers (or authoritative 
workmen), conveyancers (merchants, sailors, retail dealers, &c), and order- 
takers (persons employed to receive directions from the consumer), must, 
of course, be examined before I can enter further into the question of 
just payment of the first producer. But I have not spoken of them in 
these introductory papers, because the evils attendant on the abuse of 
such intermediate functions result not from any alleged principle of mod- 
ern political economy, but from private carelessness or iniquity. 



138 AD VALOREM. 

And if, on due and honest thought over these things, 
it seems that the kind of existence to which men are 
now summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, 
may, for some time at least, not be a luxurious one ; 
— consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury 
would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at 
our sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world. 
Luxury is indeed possible in the future — innocent and 
exquisite ; luxury for all, and by the help of all : but 
luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant ; 
the crudest man living could not sit at his feast, unless 
he sat blindfold. Raise the veil boldly ; face the light ; 
and if, as yet, the light of the eye can only be through 
tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go 
thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time 
come, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of bread and 
bequest of peace shall be Unto this last as unto thee ; 
and when, for earth's severed multitudes of the wicked 
and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation than 
that of the narrow home, and calm economy, where the 
Wicked cease — not from trouble, but from troubling — 
and the "Weary are at rest. 

THE END 



* 6 - 1951 










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